Recycling - Saving the Future

Saving the future

Recycling of common household materials has been around as far back as 400 B.C. With advocates like Plato, it has been proven that archaeological studies of ancient dumps have less household waste. Indicating that hundreds of years ago, they reduced and reused materials when new materials were not available. Today however, America generates 220 million tons of garbage each year. “Of the garbage Americans throw out, half could be recycled which is enough to fill a football stadium from top to bottom everyday” (RCU). Many organizations have attempted to inform the public about the impacts of reckless disposal of garbage can cause to the environment. Instead, the U.S is still producing 30% of the world’s trash, while Americans only inhabit 5% of Earth. The land, water, and air would significantly improve if all Americans recycled. In order to cut back on valuable resources and cause less damage to the environment, the U.S should mandate its citizens to recycle and compost used materials.

Public awareness organizations such as the National Recycling Coalition the Environmental Protection Agency, and countless others have attempted to inform and familiarize the United States of the benefits of recycling and also the harm not recycling can cause to the environment. Given how much Americans waste each day “53% of the waste can be recycled and 25% is made up of food waste and other materials that can be composted”(Eureka Recycling). With this knowledge Americans can cut back on 78% of the waste that ends up in landfills each day. However even with all this knowledge America still has not caught on to the fact that composting and recycling needs to be a part of everyday life. Wastefulness needs to be a thing of the past. In order for the world to have a successful and clean future the United States Government has an obligation to the environment and to its people to mandate the use of composting and recycling of materials to all it’s citizens. “We have the technology, and we can have the foresight to cost-effectively adapt this old system of using and disposing to a new system of conserving, reusing, recycling, and composting our resources.”(Eureka Recycling). The benefits recycling has are endless, from pollution prevention to job opportunities for Americans. Furthermore, recycling not only has a positive effect on the people of today’s generation but can drastically improve the lives of future generations.

Despite the obvious benefits to the environment and livelihood of millions of Americans and people across the globe, a few people have opposite opinions regarding the thoughts of sanctioned recycling and composting in America. These particular people believe that recycling materials actually uses more energy than manufacturing new products. “It may take more energy to recycle a given product than it did to make it originally” (Project:greenify). Although in some cases this may be true about recycling certain materials, but overall recycling in no way uses more energy than producing the products originally. The environmental footprint alone, caused by stripping the earth of materials used to manufacture goods and merchandise is far greater than recycling already made products. Another argument that can be made against a government enforced recycling law is that various people believe the government should not control the lives of U.S citizens, and that the government cannot make them do anything they do not want to do. Regardless of the opinion of a small handful of people, the main goal of a justifiable and enforced recycling and composting law is to preserve the environment and ameliorate the lives of countless Americans.