Recycling Program

Sam Oh
October 19, 2006
ESL 99

Why should we recycle? Why is recycling important to us and the future generation? Without recycling, we couldn’t comfortably live in the world due to a lot of waste. Recycling Programs are recently more popular than before because they are necessary to protect our health and environment, to conserve our natural resources, and to save our energy and money. The three components of a recycling program are to reduce, reuse, and recycle. By planning and using the three R’s, you will be minimizing your impact on our environment.

First, we should reduce the amount of unnecessary packaging, and we should find ways to reduce the amount of trash. To reduce our garbage, we should compost food scraps. Composting is a good way to recycle food and other household organic matter- such as fruit & vegetable scraps, tea bags, coffee filters, egg shells, grass clippings, wood ash, and dry leaves. As time passes, bacteria will decompose this matter into a useful product. We can then use it as mulch, and it can help retain water and prevent weeds from growing. Using this method, we can reduce the amount of garbage we throw away by thirty to fifty percent. Second, we should buy reusable products and repair durable product. We should also reuse bags, containers and other items. Reuse is defined as using an item over again in its current form without significant processing that alters its material structure. Reuse plays an important role in any recycling program because it includes diverse programs such as thrift stores, where clothes are exchanged in the purpose of reuse. In fact, there are a lot of reusable materials such as appliances, furniture, clothing, and machinery. If these durable goods were reused, many new jobs could be created around the world. Finally, we should buy recyclable products and recycle them. Recycling is defined as making a new product out of old one. There are many recyclable materials such as paper, glass, plastic, tires, batteries, textiles, motor oil, aluminum and steel. Compared with plastic, other items are considerably easy to recycle. However, plastic is difficult to recycle because there are many different types of plastic. We often believe that the coding symbols on plastics mean ‘recyclable items’. In fact, most of plastic are rarely recycled or very difficult to recycle. For example, PET(Code number one) and HPDE(Code number two) tend to be easily recycled, but other plastics(Code number three to seven) are hard to recycle.

In conclusion, we should follow the city’s recycling program and demand that it be improved. All recyclable materials should be recycled not only to save our money, but also to protect our environment. Actually, recycling is sometimes annoying and bothersome, but it is impossible for us to live comfortably in the world without recycling. There is an aphorism, ‘no pain, no gain’. It means that we can’t get anything without effort. Therefore, I believe that recycling is an investment for the future and a savings for the next generation, so our children can live safely in the clean world.