Why to Recycle

Environmental problems have become so complex many individuals feel they can have no effect on them. Even though recycling may seem more work than to simply throw your trash in the garbage, more people should start to recycle because recycling creates more U.S. jobs and provides numerous benefits for the country as well. Problems such as global warming, hazardous waste, loss of rain forests, endangered species, acid rain, the ozone layer, and the municipal waste crisis can start to feel out of control. At the very least, these problems require group and corporate action or government intervention to help citizens understand, the more people recycle, the cheaper it gets. It may be difficult but common questions such as why recycle, what’s in it for me, and how recycling creates a countless amount of United States jobs will be answered.

With all of the wide ranges of benefits that recycling has to offer, to many, the creation of jobs for many Americans seems to stand out the most. The traditional waste management system, involving garbage collection followed by land filling or incineration, creates relatively few jobs. Frequently, many of the recycling jobs are located in America’s inner cities where job creation is particularly critical. Recent studies of employment in northeast and southern states, bolstered by studies of the remanufacturing industry, indicate that recycling activities employ more than 2.5 percent of manufacturing workers. Applying these studies to the entire nation, “recycling creates 1.1 million U.S. jobs, 236 billion in gross annual sales and 37 billion in annual payrolls”(National Recycling Coalition). Since unemployment is now at its lowest level in a generation, job creation might appear to be unnecessary. The fact that recycling continues to expand the job base and create tens of thousands of new jobs for a constantly growing labor force is a very important contribution toward sustaining stable employment rates in the future. Of equal importance is that many of these recycling jobs are in urban areas, and many are geared toward entry-level workers.

Many have heard that the U.S. has plenty of trees and more than enough energy. Why recycle? That’s right; there are plenty of trees and energy in the United States. “As a result of the forest products industry’s sustainable forestry practices, there are more trees in the U.S. today than there were 75 years ago”(Bring Recycling 1). And because more trees are grown in the U.S. than are harvested, there will be plenty of trees and forest products for future generations to enjoy. But the United States should continue to recover our waste products for recycling. “It takes 95% less energy to recycle aluminum than it does to make it from raw materials. Others are just below with plastics at 70%, glass at 40%, and newspaper at 40%”(NRCD 2). These savings far outweigh the energy created as by-products of incineration and land filling. Recycling also helps control waste disposal problems. For every ton of paper recovered for recycling, about 3 cubic yards of landfill space are saved. And in many cases, recovering paper for recycling can save communities money that they would otherwise have to spend for disposal. “Two years after calling recycling a 40 million dollar drain on the city, New York City leaders realized that a redesigned, efficient recycling system could actually save the city 20 million dollars and they have now signed a 20-year recycling contract” (National Recycling Coalition 1).

Along with all of the precarious reasons of why to recycle, recycling can benefit each United States citizen in some way. It reduces pollution, reduces the need to harvest natural resources, saves landfill space, creates jobs, and can save people money. By choosing to recycle, the U.S. is improving the environment today. In addition, the U.S. is helping to ensure future generations have clean air to breathe, water to drink, ample