If asked, most of us would agree that recycling is the right thing to do.\u00a0 From a logical point of view it makes perfect sense to reuse the earth\u2019s precious limited resources as many times as possible before disposing them into the abyss of our landfills.\u00a0 I grew up during the 70\u2019s and remember quite fondly the recycling efforts from the campaigns of \u201cDon\u2019t be a Litter Bug\u201d and the American Indian shedding a tear while overlooking the polluted landscape.\u00a0 Those TV commercials ingrained in me the message to leave everywhere I go cleaner than how I found it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
During this same period of time the environmental groups were pushing really hard to get everyone to stop using paper bags.\u00a0 The question paper or plastic was asked for many, many years whenever going through the checkout isle.\u00a0 It got to the point that choosing paper would result in strange stares and looks from others in line.\u00a0 We all went to plastic in an effort to \u201csave the trees\u201d so that this precious resource wouldn\u2019t be gone for future generations.<\/p>\n
Some thirty years later we are all more educated about our planet and wanting to do the right thing.\u00a0 But what is the \u201cright\u201d thing?\u00a0 Is it enough to recycle?\u00a0 If you spend any time online looking up plastic pollution you will see thousands of pictures of our planet being choked from plastic pollution.\u00a0 It is so bad in the oceans that there are five separate gyres which are giant areas where plastic and other debris has accumulated.\u00a0 The Pacific Gyre, located between Hawaii and Alaska has been reported as being the size of Texas (that\u2019s pretty big).\u00a0 This area has about 5x the amount of plastic than wildlife.\u00a0 Much of the plastic has broken down into smaller pieces and is being mistaken as food by birds and fish.\u00a0 If we are doing such a great job with recycling why is this still happening?<\/p>\n
I believe it is time we start to hold ourselves accountable and begin by asking the tough questions.\u00a0 It is real easy to feel like individually we are not contributing to the plastic pollution issue because we feel so good about recycling.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong, recycling is absolutely vital to being better stewards of our planet\u2019s resources.\u00a0 However, when we really look into recycling we find that it is a word being used more to make us feel better about the situation than a solution to the actual issue.<\/p>\n
Let me ask you a question, do you know where that packaging material goes after you place it into the recycle bin?\u00a0 I think we would all like to believe that it goes into making another similar product that will then be recycled again and again, keeping the cycle going.\u00a0 The truth is that what happens to that recycled material differs greatly from where you live.\u00a0 After 30+ years of promoting recycling there are still large portions of the United States which don\u2019t have recycling facilities available to business and consumers.\u00a0 For those consumers and businesses which do have access to recycling, there is usually a specific kind and type of plastic, glass or paper which is accepted for recycling.\u00a0 Over 80% of all the plastic in the world ends up in landfills, marine environments or as pollution.<\/p>\n
In 2009, 84% of all plastics recycled in the US were exported to China.\u00a0 Once it arrives in China the use of those plastics will vary greatly, with the worse being incinerated for the creation of electricity.<\/p>\n
What does this mean for recycling?\u00a0 Well, it means that our idea that a bottle placed into a recycle bin which makes us feel really good is not really being used in a way that we believe it is or should be.\u00a0 As environmental stewards, we should be concerned and interested in making the system better.\u00a0 We should get involved and support companies, legislation and recyclers who emphasize using recycled material in their second life products which can then be used again a third, fourth, fifth and so on.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This would help to create more demand for recycled material in the US and keep recycled material from being shipped overseas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If asked, most of us would agree that recycling is the right thing to do.\u00a0 From a logical point of view it makes perfect sense to reuse the earth\u2019s precious limited resources as many times as possible before disposing them into the abyss of our landfills.\u00a0 I grew up during the 70\u2019s and remember quite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[835,129,867,847],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-blogs","tag-plastic-recycling","tag-recycling","tag-recycling-containers","tag-recycling-plastic-bottles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}