Recycling Is A Way Of Life
ReputationProfessor.Com Way of Life by Bob Carper.
Recycling has become a necessary way of life. It is just as easy to throw out to trash materials that can just as easily be recycled. The question is, who is going to be the one that does it? The answer is simple enough. Just hold up a mirror in front of your face. That is the person in charge of recycling in your household.
What gets recycled? There are four basic recyclable materials. These are paper, glass, aluminum, and plastic.
Let’s look at paper first. Most recycling centers accept all paper products. Put all your newspapers into a daily collection bin. You can start by reducing the amount of paper that comes in to our house. Cancel any unnecessary subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. Do you really need the newspaper if you don’t read it as soon as it comes in?
You can cut down on your junk mail by putting up huge signs on your mailbox. Recycle things like envelopes, packing material, etc. Print both sides of the paper and whenever you can use recycled paper.
Expended dry cell batteries are hazardous to the environment. They leach chemicals into the soil. Make sure you don’t put hem into the garbage as they contain harmful metals.. There are a number of places that pick up batteries for recycling. Find out is there is one near your home. You could call your local county government council to inquire. If possible, use rechargeable batteries so that you don’t have to keep discarding them as soon as their charge is gone.
Make sure you are careful if you are handling broken glass. Most county recycle programs have blue bins to recycle glass. If you are putting glass into a general recycle bin provided by the council, just check whether they accept broken glass because some do not. Clean out all the glass articles before you put them in. You don’t want the whole recycle center smelling to high heaven!
There are so many different kinds of plastic today but the two most recognizable items are polystyrene foam and polyethylene. Polystyrene comes in blocks or popcorn. Polyethylene is used in sheets and bottles. You should keep these materials in separate bags prior to local recycling centers where you can deposit plastic products. Clean them before you put them there.
And last but not least are aluminum cans. Every family consumes multiple gallons of beer and soft drinks. These take up voluminous air space, so you have to compress them. The easiest way is to pinch the empty can in the middle and then fold the top half over the bottom half. This will reduce the volume by half. There are can compressor presses available at some hardware stores where you can totally flatten an aluminum can just as if you were squeezing an orange.
Whatever way you choose to recycle, just do it. Nobody will give you a medal for your efforts, and you will not win the award of Recycler of The Month. Nobody will pay you a cent to recycle trash, although you could be fined if you violate a mandatory recycle law. The chief benefit comes knowing you are doing your part to keep the air and waterways clean. That is a benefit we all can live by.
July 19 2010 | ReputationProfessor-Com Way of Life | Comments Off
You Should Learn About Recycling
Learn about ReputationProfessor-Com Recycling by MIKE SELVON.
There is no denying that you only have one true home. It is not your house, apartment, condo or shack. It is this Earth and it is more valuable to you than you will ever realize. It provides you with food, air and shelter.
Would you really not do your part to keep your home clean and free of litter? Recycling is the easiest step you can take towards preserving your home and ensuring it is there for your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Global warming is a very real threat to the preservation of this planet. You have probably seen television ads focusing on new hybrid vehicles that can help save the environment by producing less toxic byproducts from the burning of fossil fuels. Does the burning of trash cross your mind as ways you can help save the environment.
Our landfills are becoming overflowing with hazardous waste and other products that are not biodegradable. Plastic water bottles, disposable diapers and styrofoam containers, to name a few, are all becoming huge problems in most areas of the world.
Recycling is pretty easy once you get everything sorted. Information on learning how to sort the materials is easily found on the internet and in pamphlets from the Environmental Protection Agency. You will need to sort out the recyclables into the appropriate bins and from there the recyclable materials are sent on their way to becoming something else for use. You can also utilize those food scraps and waste trimmings from the yard in a compost heap.
If every person did their part to help combat overflowing landfills, then we could reduce our waste by fifty percent. That is half the amount going into landfills today. Perhaps there will come a time when we no longer have to continuously find new places to bury our waste.
Plastics would be reused. Organic materials would be turned back into the soil to enrich the ground for crops. It is a lovely sentiment and thought but not enough people are doing their part to help make this a cleaner world.
Recycling is a huge responsibility that each and every person should take upon themselves to help keep our landfills free of recyclables that could be better used elsewhere. If you do not know how to recycle, then there are resources in many places to help you getting started.
July 19 2010 | Learn about ReputationProfessor-Com Recycling | Comments Off
A Brief Introduction to Recycling
ReputationProfessor.Com Introduction By Nina K.
Recycling
During the 1960s and ’70s it was thought that emissions from factory chimneys and sewage pipes constituted the biggest environmental problem. But since then, due to new, worldwide “Eco-laws”, these discharges have decreased considerably. Instead, the focus has switched to the environmental problems associated with the goods that are produced and consumed in modern society. Many of the most environmentally damaging substances are currently being supplied through glass bottles, newspapers, plastic bags, coke cans, cardboard boxes and sweet wrappers just to mention a few.
To tell you what recycling is and what the word actually embodies may seem strange to you. I am sure all of you think you know exactly what it entails. But in theory recycling involves the separation and collection of materials for processing and re-manufacturing old products into new products, and the use of these new products, completing the cycle.
Glass is one of the most common man-made materials. It is made from sand, limestone and sodium carbonate and silica. The ingredients are heated to a high temperature in a furnace until they melt together. The molten glass from the furnace cools to form sheets, or may be moulded to make objects. Actually glass is completely recyclable and making products from recycled glass rather than starting from scratch saves energy resources. Recycled glass is made into new beverage bottles, food jars, insulation and other construction materials. Usually, clear glass containers are recycled into new clear glass products, while coloured glass containers are recycled into new coloured glass products.
In fact, the recycling of glass as well other products, such as aluminum and steel cans, cardboard, car tyres, newspapers and certain plastics is a growing industry in most of the world today. In South Africa however, we don’t have a very high level of recycling. There aren’t enough people who take an active interest in the environment and try to do their bit in preserving nature, by for example, taking used bottles, aluminum cans or even leaves and other garden refuse to recycling sites. This is probably due to a lot of reasons. The first and foremost being that, in South Africa, we don’t have many recycling centres and, lets face it, how many of us really sort our rubbish before throwing it in the rubbish bin?
Since it is now these products, and no longer industrial emissions, that accounts for most of the environmentally harmful substances being discharged in nature the conditions for environmental efforts have fundamentally changed. As the “release sites” or the polluters, have become so numerous, a totally new system for controlling and handling environmentally harmful wastes is needed.
One way could be to transfer the responsibility for this to the producer of goods, according to the established principle “the polluter pays.”
However, I found this principle not be all that efficient in practise. To find out what is actually being done at the industrial level, I spoke with William Footman, one of the regional managers of Nampak, which is one of South Africa’s 2 glass manufacturers. He told me that the reason we don’t have a very developed glass recycling programme in this country, is due to the fact that we only have two factories where glass can be recycled back into beverage bottles. And as it is far too expensive for the companies to transport old bottles back to their factories for recycling, they would rather produce new, rather than re-use the old glass.
But, producers who put a product on the market should, quite simply, be responsible for taking back as much as is sold. What is important for environmental policy is the creation of a system in which each producer assumes his responsibility. But should all the responsibility lie on the producers? Every consumer who buys these products should make an asserted effort to help keep our planet clean.
I searched the Internet to find out exactly how poorly we as South Africans compare to the rest of the world in recycling. The country that has been in the forefront of recycling, particularly for household waste, is Sweden. Swedes have to carefully recycle and separate their own rubbish for the refuse collectors on a daily basis. Even in the middle of their very cold winters, in raging snowstorms, the Swedish people go to the recycling stations with their household trash to perform the daily ritual of separating cardboard from plastics and glass from biological waste.
Actually nearly all 1st world countries and many developing countries have developing or already highly developed recycling programmes, and South Africa desperately needs to jump on the ‘recycling wagon’. A step in the right direction could be to build recycling plants all over the country. Every town should set up a sufficient number of collection stations and every household should share the responsibility and sort their rubbish to ensure that batteries and electrical appliances are not thrown in landfills, that glass, aluminium cans and plastic bags don’t clutter the country-side. Working together with the producers, consumers should send items back to factories, to be recycled and thereby reused.
The process of recycling, for example paper, entails the conversion of waste paper to various types of finer grades of paper. First, careful sorting is required so that items such as plastic wrapping, paper clips and staples can be removed. Waste paper is divided into categories such as newsprint; typing and computer paper; and magazines, which have shiny paper and coloured inks and need special treatment. Next, the ink must be removed. This is done by soaking the paper and breaking it up into small pieces in giant washers, then treating it with chemicals that loosen the ink so that it can be rinsed away. Sometimes more than one such chemical must be used because many types of ink must be removed. Finally, the wet, shredded waste paper is blended with other materials according to the type of end product that is desired. Old pieces of cloth, which are used to produce the finest, most expensive grades of paper, may be mixed in. Wood pulp and other forms of cellulose such as straw may also be added in varying proportions. If white paper or paper for greeting cards or stationery is to be produced, bleach may also be added to lighten it; if newsprint is to be produced, a mixture of red and blue dyes is added to reduce the greyness of the final product. Chemical preservatives are also added at this point.
At this time, the fully treated material is a sort of liquid sludge that is ready to be made into paper. In most papermaking operations, the sludge passes through a machine called a beater, which is essentially a very heavy roller that presses the fibres in the sludge together and squeezes out the water. The paper is formed and held together by the natural interlocking of the long cellulose or cloth fibres as they are pressed and dried. No glue is used in the process and in fact, the natural glue in wood is removed chemically before the paper is made.
A refining machine brushes the roll of sludge to smooth out irregularities. The papermaking machine presses the sludge into thin slices, which are then further dried by pressing or by being placed in furnaces. Finally, the paper is polished or chemically treated to give it the proper finish and lastly packaged and sent to customers.
The papermaking process itself is pretty much the same whether one uses virgin materials, recycled materials, or a mixture of the two. The difference is in the preparation of the sludge. Recycled material requires careful sorting. This in turn means that the paper mills must have a place to store waste paper and the staff to sort it, as well as a means of disposing of waste paper that cannot be used. Removing ink from waste paper also requires special chemicals, equipment, and equipment operators. As a result, some paper mills are not set up to use any recycled materials. That’s why the forests are getting smaller and smaller.
Also, not all paper products can be made with recycled paper. Brown grocery bags, for example, can be recycled into other types of paper, but they must be made, at least partially, out of virgin materials because only virgin materials have the long unbroken fibres that give the bags their necessary strength. Unlike glass bottles and aluminum cans, which can be recycled an infinite number of times, paper cannot be recycled indefinitely. Each time it is recycled, its quality degrades slightly because the fibres become more and more broken. At some point recycled paper has to be mixed in with virgin material, and eventually after repeated uses, it ends up in a landfill or and incinerator.
Obviously as recycling plants and collection sites have to be set up all over the country and for all the various types of materials we use in every day life, it is going to be a very expensive process to start, but it is vital that the wheels are set in motion before it is too late! In turn this will lead to many new jobs opening up for unskilled as well as skilled people in South Africa helping to keep our country cleaner as well as decreasing unemployment and thereby promoting the economy.
July 18 2010 | ReputationProfessor-Com Introduction | Comments Off
Recycling Resolutions
ReputationProfessor.Com Resolutions by Dawn Burden Bates.
If your home is like mine, the holidays left you with a huge mess. Empty boxes and torn wrapping paper litter the floor after the kids excitedly open their gifts. It’s so tempting to gather it all up and through it in the outside garbage bin.
But this is a great opportunity to not only recycle, but to reuse. Almost all of the wrapping paper and boxes can be recycled, so consider keeping your contribution out of the landfill. And for the reuse possibilities…they are practically endless. I’m pretty sure that most of the ribbons I use have been used for several years. And many of the boxes that hold the gifts are great to use for packaging gifts next year. Do you realize that many stores now CHARGE you for a gift box? Sheesh, I’ll save mine for next year, thank you. Not to mention the gift bags. I LOVE getting my gifts in those pretty little bags. Especially since I know I will be using it for someone else’s gift somewhere down the road. Do you know how much those things cost? They are outrageous. No way would I throw them away. They are too valuable.
Now what are we to do with the tree? If you use an artificial tree, it’s a pretty easy decision. You fold it up and store it for next year. Simple. And if you are lucky enough to live in a warm environment and purchased a live tree including the root ball, you can get to work planting it in your yard to enjoy for years to come. But what about cut trees? Most communities offer some sort of Christmas tree recycling. The lucky ones have curbside pickup to recycle their trees. The rest of us need to decide what to do. What convinces me to haul the tree to the recycling facility is a couple of things.
I was willing to haul it home after I purchased it, so I can just as easily take it to be recycled.
Some communities use the old trees to shred and cover pathways and trails through parks. This helps to repair and reduce the damage we create as we enjoy our hikes.
Some communities turn the old trees into mulch and then provide it to the public for free! What a deal. Spring is just right around the corner, by the way.
So that pretty much covers what we can do to reduce our holiday effect on the environment. Now it’s a new year and we can begin thinking about getting a fresh start.
Some resolutions to consider:
- Resolve to begin recycling if you don’t already. You can start small. This site provides a wealth of information about getting your recycling efforts off the ground.
- If you already recycle, step it up a notch. If your curbside recycling service doesn’t accept a particular item (like glass or cardboard), resolve to begin taking that item to the drop off facility in your area.
- Resolve to purchase more products packaged with post consumer recycled materials. The higher the percentage listed on the package, the better.
- Resolve to purchase more items made from recycled materials. Paper towels, toilet paper, napkins, and many other paper products fall into this category.
- Resolve to purchase more items in bulk, thus reducing packaging waste.
- Resolve to create at least one creative craft using something you might otherwise throw away. This is fun, gets your creative juices flowing, can reduce stress, and is a g reat way to spend some quality time with your family.
July 18 2010 | ReputationProfessor-Com Resolutions | Comments Off
21st Century Recycling - Getting to Less Waste
Less ReputationProfessor-Com Waste Author: Beverly Clarke.
RECYCLING ALL TYPES OF PAPER
Let’s assume that you don’t print out the North American average of thirty plus pages per day or buy the morning newspaper or even buy highly prepackaged goods at the grocery store, you could be astonished at just how much paper waste you render in a given twelvemonth period. Recycling paper results in monumental energy, fresh water, carbon dioxide and natural resource savings - as much as seventy-five percent in many cases.
Paper also happens to be one of the most recyclable items. Clean office paper can now be easily separated from its inks and toners, with the resulting pulp being employed in a broad assortment of products, including new paper that’s nearly indistinguishable from the old. More often, however, paper is combined together with news print and additional kinds of subordinate grade paper products to produce a lower-grade or “down-cycled” type of paper product. You will be able to achieve a big benefit by recycling what paper you are able to and composting the balance as add-ons of “brown matter” that keeps the high nitrogen kitchen waste adequately provided with carbon.
REDUCING THE WASTE MATERIAL YOU BUY
The most crucial component of the recycling power structure is the reduction of waste as a number one priority. This is most frequently managed by devoting rigorous care to the things you buy. You can establish a campaign to buy items with minimal packaging. While such decisiveness often times requires you to make a primal shifting in what motivates your buying
urge, such a thoughtful carry through is frequently attained when monetary resources are low. Let packaging comprise part of your buying decisions even as much as what’s inside. There’s just about always a low-packaging item. Select packaging that can be composted at home (like paper or twine) or recycled as often as feasible over plastics that will persist for hundreds of years.
Determining just how to make more of the items you utilize in your day-to-day life for yourself makes an enormous impact on how much rubbish for which you will even need to project. Those who produce and prepare their own food, composting the leftovers and returning them back to the soil as compost, have little (if no) trash to be concerned about.
July 17 2010 | Less ReputationProfessor-Com Waste | Comments Off
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