Why Recycle ?

Recycling is very good way of saving energy and conserving the environment. But unfortunately, we often don’t care enough about it. I found a lot of interesting facts about recycling:
• 1 recycled tin can (often used for softdrink container) would save enough energy to power a television for 3 hours.
• 1 recycled glass bottle would save enough energy to power a computer for 25 minutes.
• 70% less energy is required to recycle paper compared with making it from raw materials.
• 1 recycled plastic bottle would save enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 3 hours.

Some other interesting facts that we need to know:
• Approximately 60% of the rubbish that ends up in the dustbin could be recycled.
• On average, 16% of the money you spend on a product pays for the packaging, which ultimately ends up as rubbish.
• As much as 50% of waste in the average dustbin could be composted.
• The largest lake in the Britain could be filled with rubbish from the UK in 8 months. How long do you think it will take to fill up the lake with rubbish from all over the world ? Hmmm.. In my opinion, 2-3 days would be enough.
• 9 out of 10 people would recycle more if it were made easier.


Above facts are really interesting to be read. It quite shocked me to know that packaging cost is about 16% of the total price of a product. I think it is too much for something that will end up in a dustbin. We should find a way to reduce the packaging cost.

Glass
• Each family uses an average of 500 glass bottles and jars annually.
• Glass is 100% recyclable and can be used again and again.
• Glass that is thrown away and ends up in landfills will never decompose.
Paper
• Recycled paper produces 73% less air pollution than if it was made from raw materials.
• 12.5 million tonnes of paper and cardboard are used annually in the UK. Have you ever imagine the amount of paper usage in the whole world ? How many trees needed to meet the demand of paper ?
• It takes 24 trees to make 1 ton of newspaper. In UK alone approximately 300 million trees are needed each year. Imagine the amount needed for the whole world.

Plastic
• 275,000 tonnes of plastic are used each year in the UK, that’s about 15 million bottles per day or 5.4 billions bottles per year.
• Most families throw away about 40kg of plastic per year, which could otherwise be recycled.
• The use of plastic in Western Europe is growing about 4% each year.
• Plastic can take up to 500 years to decompose.

May with the above facts we can realize how important recycling is. We should do whatever we can to reduce rubbish. It will make a big impact for the environment.
For example, if we could reduce paper usage for just 1 kg/person per year, it would save approximately 5.28 million tress in Indonesia alone. Another example is by reducing the usage of plastic shopping bag. We can start to bring our own shopping bag when we go to shop our daily needs. Many supermarket has already sell reusable shopping bag. Separating organic and non organic rubbish will also help the recycling process.

Many things we can do in our daily life to conserve our environment. We can always start from ourselves, even simple things can really make a big difference for the environment. Remember the “3R” of green living, which are reduce, reuse, and recycle. Let us start to care about our environment. Let us save the world we live.