We Need to Recycle More

Koll Severson, Staff Writer


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It takes around 500 years for a plastic bag to decompose, which means that would be at least 5 lifetimes. But by then, an animal would have probably swallowed it. Do you really want an animal to choke to death on something that you could’ve recycled, but threw away instead? Landfills in Hong Kong are already overflowing, mainly because of food that they don’t eat. Around 12.9 percent of the whole world is starving, and enough food to feed hundreds, maybe thousands, is sitting, wasted, in garbage bins.

Think you’re doing good recycling? 75% percent of our waste stream is recyclable, but the average person only recycles 30% of it. This system creates way too much garbage and landfill overfills, spilling into animals homes and seas. Animals were here before us, and some give their lives to feed us, and this is how we repay them? Let them choke on plastic bags and drown in soda and oil? Buy extra just to throw it away without a second glance? Spray pesticides all over our grass and kill thousands of bugs just with one can? We can be better than this!

Just ONE recycled can would provide enough energy to power a TV for 3 whole hours. Now think, if at least half the population recycled, we wouldn’t even NEED power lines, let alone expensive generators. 1 recycled glass bottle would power a computer for 25 minutes. Broken glass? Recycle that so that it can be used to make new materials or turned into energy. 6 glass bottles = a computer that lasts for 2.5 hours. All this energy is usually just thrown away without a second thought. The unreleased energy in ONE dustbin can power a TV for around 5,000 hours, without break. Glass is also 100% recyclable, and can be recycled many times over and over.