Isn’t it Time?
“Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees (35’ tall), 2 barrels of oil (enough fuel to run the average car for 1260 miles or from Dallas to Los Angeles), 4100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for 6 months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space (one family sized pick-up truck) and 60 pounds of air pollution” (Trash to Cash). That’s just one ton of paper. In the next ten years, it is estimated in America alone, fourteen and a half million tons of paper will be thrown away. Ninety five percent of all paper will be un-recycled (techsoup.org). To what do we owe this corpulent addendum of wasted paper to? Selfishness. Ignorance. Laziness and over consumption. Think about this, there are approximately 3,000 customers a day for one average grocery store (calculateme.com). Out of those 3,000 customers, about 500 of them keep their receipt. 450 of those who keep their receipt will eventually through it out. Now, there are 90 grocery stores in the city of Santa Clarita (superpages.com). There are 478 cities in the state of California (counties.org.). And, 50 states resign in the U.S.A. This means, the average amount of thrown out receipt paper for the United States for one day, is six billion three hundred forty-five million, four hundred fifty thousand wasted pieces of paper (calculateme.com). The U.S. is the largest over consumer of paper worldwide. If we can take a step toward changing the ways of recycling here, the environment will prosper.
There is no way to convince every person in the world to recycle paper, let alone recycle. However, you can push people to do so through incentives. In fact, the lack of great incentives for recycling paper is a huge contributing factor to the waste of it. Offering people more money for recycling would most definitely decrease the amount of wasted paper material. Allowing recycling to count as part of convict community service would severely drop the rate of paper waste. Unfortunately, there will still be a large percentage of humanity that simply will not change their ways. We call this selfishness, and not much can be done for such a disease.
Ignorance creates paths for un-salvaged materials to pile. People need to be made more aware of the environment and how tragically it is suffering. Landfills do not lie in the middle of our cities. They do not seep into every air molecule in our homes. They are rarely acknowledged and sit unrecognized beyond the outskirts of towns. Citizens pay little attention to the landfills because they do not have to. If we had to drive by these massive loads of rotting trash every day and see how truly terrible it is for not only our selves, but our environment and other species living within it, I guarantee people would change their ways. Most people in the world have enough respect for life to help out when it is in need. Show the people what they are creating! Show them how many products could have been created from that rotting trash! Our resources are depleting (Dan, calfinder.com). Our ozone is depleting, global warming is flourishing, and our earth is crying out for help! The Pulp and Paper manufacturing corporation is the third largest industrial greenhouse emitter globally. It contributes to 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally (greenpdf.com). Documented health risks in relation to this company include: cancer, lung disease, reproductive and hormone problems, heart disease, immune system damage, skin disease and more (wordpress.com). Think about what this says. Aside from those facts, paper producing companies and landfills create “poisonous leakages into water bodies and the air are frequent …throughout the world” (wordpress.com). Save the environment and educate the people one small step at a time!
What do you suppose is the number one reason for so many materials going un-recycled? You guessed it, the laziness of human kind. Did you know one hundred fifty one hours of television are watched each