Why Recycling is More Important than Ever Today

Plastic is not always fantastic especially when it goes directly into landfills. Scientists have estimated that it will take somewhere between 450-1000 years for plastics to decompose, with others claiming that plastic may never decompose. This is exactly why recycling is more important than ever in our society today. In Australia alone, 36,700 tonnes of plastic bags are dumped into landfills every year. The negative side effects of plastic waste on the environment forced us to come up with a solution to reduce landfill waste. Recycling has been around for many years but today, the call for greater efforts has tremendously increased due to how global warming has and will create a poorer quality of life for this and future generations. If you're looking to create a positive impact on our planet, here are 7 practical and enlightening reasons as to why you should start recycling today: #1: It Triggers Awareness and Saves Money Recycling helps you become more aware of your plastic usage and disposal. When buying any product, think about how you can properly dispose of it to prevent it from landing up in landfills. Even better, you can decide to reduce the frequency of your purchases to reduce plastic waste generated as a whole. Not only does this encourage you to only buy the items you need, but it also helps you spend your money wisely. For example, you can choose to buy in bulk, invest in bottle refills to reduce your plastic use and weekly household expenditure. #2: It Creates New Jobs Recycling can lead to the creation of new job opportunities with increased demand. With more plastic to recycle, more people will be needed to turn the material into new and useful goods. Recycling outperforms landfill waste management in creating more employment opportunities by 10 times. #3: It Reduces Landfill Wastes The amount of plastic waste dumped in our landfills has been collecting over time, making land space for waste disposal very, very limited. Aggressive recycling may be one of the solutions to help us manage our limited resources. As much as 75% of plastic waste buried in our landfills could have and should have been recycled. This means our landfills could have had less waste if were more conscientious in our recycling efforts. #4: It Saves Energy Recycling saves lots of energy. Making products from recycled materials like shampoo bottles requires simpler processes and less power as the products have previously been processed. For every new item created from recycled material, up to 30% of energy is being saved during the manufacturing process. More specifically, producing plastic items from recycled plastic material can reduce energy needs by 66%. From these numbers, it’s very apparent that companies are not the only recipient of recycling benefits but the environment as well. Less energy used by manufacturers translates to less burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil, which leads to preserving Mother Earth. #5: It Preserves Natural Resources Did you know plastic manufacturing requires natural gas, water, and petroleum? When we start recycling more plastic, we can reduce the need to use more natural resources. A ton of recycled plastic can save over 16 barrels of oil, 5,700 kilowatts of energy and about 30 meters of land space in a landfill! Therefore, we should be recycling to prevent further depletion of our natural resources wherever possible. #6: It Minimises Carbon Emissions Recycling has big role to play in minimising carbon emissions. Plastic waste that has not been recycled usually end being combusted through which harmful carbon emissions are emitted. These emissions don’t just disappear into thin air. Research suggests that a single tree has the power to eliminate 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere every year. This demonstrates that trees are vital in our fight against carbon emissions. To that effect, we need to push our recycling efforts more to save more trees and ensure that there is a well-balanced level of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our air. Be Involved in Recycling Truly, recycling is more important today than ever. We only have one planet to live in and everyone’s involvement in recycling is absolutely necessary to ensure that the future generation can live in a better environment. Though we cannot completely eliminate the usage of plastic, recycling is one effective way to reduce the burden of waste plastic produces. Begin your fight for the environment by choosing products and brands like Euca. With 100% biodegradable packaging, the foam-like “peanuts” used to safely deliver your Euca cleaning and laundry products are designed to decompose. This means you can use it in the compost used in your garden or can simply be dissolved in water and used to water your lawn. Every little action counts. Get involved with recycling and help us preserve our planet today! Shop for our eco-friendly products here.