RECYCLING SAVES OUR ENVIRONMENT
Recycling Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By reducing the amount of energy used by industry, recycling also reduces greenhouse gas emissions and helps prevent global climate change. This is because much of the energy used in industrial processes and in transportation involves burning fossil fuels like gasoline, diesel and coal, the most important sources of carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions into the environment. Additional benefits are derived from reduced emissions from incinerators and landfills and by slowing the harvest of trees, which are carbon sinks. In 2004, recycling reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2 million metric tons of carbon equivalent.
Recycling Reduces Emissions of Air and Water Pollutants
In addition to greenhouse gases, recycling can reduce a range of pollutants from entering the air and water. By decreasing the need to extract and process new raw materials from the earth, recycling can eliminate the pollution associated with the initial stages of a product's development: material extraction, refining and processing. These activities pollute the air, land and water with toxic materials, such as ammonia, carbon monoxide, methane, and sulfur dioxides. Further reductions are achieved as a result of energy saving, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants. In addition to the greenhouse gas reductions mentioned previously, additional reductions of air emissions due to recycling total 587,000 tons . Reduced water emissions total nearly 9,000 tons
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Environmental problems have become so complex that many individuals feel they can have no effect on them.
Problems like global warming, hazardous waste, loss of rain forests, endangered species, acid rain, the ozone layer, and the municipal waste crisis can feel out of our control. At the very least, these problems require group and corporate action or government intervention.
But there are some things the individual can control. Our waste reduction and recycling activities can make a difference.
Recycling Saves Natural Resources
Save with the four Rs:
Refuse excess packaging.
Reduce the amount you buy.
Re-use as much as possible.
Recycle all things you can't Refuse, Reduce or Reuse.
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