A Learning Experience
What would you expect to learn from a field trip to one of our country’s top recycling centers?
Probably how efficiently everything is sorted and how everything is being recycled and saved from the landfill. What I learned from visiting the Santa Monica Recycling Center with 48 first-graders was quite different.
Before entering the facility, our host, Andrew, gave us a brief introduction and some sobering facts.
- The U.S. has NO Recycling Policy.
- There are 10,000 landfills currently in operation…all with their own methods of dealing with trash
- The way materials are disposed of is a 19th century solution
- The #1 material that makes up landfills is Paper.
How much paper? The U.S. throws away enough paper every year to make a 12-foot wall from Los Angeles to New York City.
How Much is Trash Really Worth?
But what Andrew talked about next is what resonated with me in a new way.
He took a piece of paper and asked, “What is used to make this?”
Answer: “Trees!”
Yes. Trees are cut down and the wood has to be turned into a liquid pulp. That is very difficult to do. Did anyone drive through a forest to get here? No?
Yes, paper is very valuable.
He took a plastic bottle and asked, “What is used to make this?
Answer: “Oil!”
Yes, oil is taken out of the earth.That is very difficult to do and a resource we can’t replace.
Yes, a plastic bottle is very valuable.
He took his gold wedding ring and held it up. “What is used to make this?”
Answer: “Gold!”
Yes. Someone has to mine deep in the earth to find this precious metal…then make it into a ring. That is very difficult to do.
And that is why metal is so valuable.
A New Perspective
Seeing Andrew describe materials this way when he wakes up each day to face monolithic mountains of valuable materials that are headed for the landfill, clearly made a deep impression on everyone.
I don’t think there’s a way to comprehend the amount of materials that are coming in to these facilities, truck after truck filled to capacity.
The amount of paper and plastic is astounding:
Do you know how much of a landfill is made up of paper? 40 percent!
And tons of it gets buried just because it gets mixed in with food waste and can’t be recycled. Most of it could be saved and re-used, if people just understood how valuable it is and took responsibility to make sure it gets to the right place.
The Good News
The Department of Energy states that a ton of paper made from recycled fibers conserves 7,000 gallons of water, up to 31 trees, 4,000 KWh of electricity and prevents up to 60 pounds of air pollutants (not including carbon dioxide) being dispersed into the atmosphere.
Recycling just ONE aluminum can is the equivalent of keeping one 100-watt light bulb burning for approximately four hours or having the television running for three hours.
Recycling just ONE plastic bottle can save enough energy to power one 60-watt light bulb for six hours.
What can you do?
1. Reduce – Stop Catalogs, Junk Mail and Phone Books:
2. Re-Use – Make every day as Waste-Free as you can. Here are some Ecology Shop favorites:
Eco Cup, Lunch Container, Bamboo Utensils, Water Bottle, Reusable Bag
3. Recycle
For local information: earth911.com
Recycling Events:
America Recycles Day is November 15th. Take the Pledge
College Recycling Competition registration November 7th through January 22, 2012
Originally published in Shop Ecology.
