So perhaps you are feeling good about your recycling efforts. And you should. Taking an extra couple of seconds to decide if an item is trash or not is a small price to pay to go green. On a recent tour of the Oxnard residents create, on average, 7.2 pounds of garbage each day. This is higher than the EPA national average of 4.5 pounds a day. Although 7.2 pounds sounds shockingly high, that number has decreased due to the recession (there is always a bright side). This processing station handles recycles for approximately 200,000 people and the annual average is about 250,000 tons per year which also includes commercial waste. Unfortunately, only about 15% is actually able to be diverted from the landfill and recycled. Every little bit adds up. Let’s say you recycled just a half a pound of your 4.5 pounds of trash a day. You would personally save 182.5 pounds a year from the landfill. If every person in the state of California were to do the same, the result would be over 6,935 trillion pounds a year saved from the landfill. That’s a lot less trash!
What to recycle
Find out what recyclables your local recycling facility accepts. Try to avoid placing plastics in the bin that your local recyclers aren’t equipped for. Since plastics have different formulations and physical properties like strength and density, they must be sorted before they are recycled. The recycling process recovers the raw material, which can then be used to make new plastic products.
Follow the wash and squash rule. First rinse the plastic container and then squash it to save space in the bin. Rinsing your containers will also help to keep pests to a minimum. However, consider the amount of fresh water you use to rinse containers, especially in arid climates.
Recycling paper saves energy and reduces pollution. Making new paper from recycled paper uses up to 55% less energy than creating virgin paper from trees. An added benefit is the reduction of related air pollution by 95%. If we were to recycle all of the Sunday newspapers printed in the U.S., the California Department of Conservation estimates that effort would save 550,000 trees. That’s about 28 million trees a year. So, it's easy to save a tree and energy, too.
Glass is a great material to recycle. Glass can be recycled an infinite number of times and will not wear out. So, whenever possible recycle those glass contain and keep them out of the trash.
Whether aluminum cans, foil or tins, recycling aluminum can save a lot of energy. Making one pound of recycled aluminum requires only 4% of the energy it takes to make virgin aluminum from its original bauxite ore state. That is a huge amount of energy when considering that Americans use 100.6 billion cans each year. Remember every little bit adds up. So try to reduce, reuse and then recycle.
