The Real Story of Stuff
If you want to really know what happens to stuff, visit your local recycling center...guaranteed to change how you think.
What would you expect to learn from a field trip to one of our country’s top recycling centers? Probably how efficiently everything is sorted and how everything is being recycled and saved from the landfill.
What I learned from visiting the Santa Monica Recycling Center with 48 first-graders was quite different. Before entering the facility, our host, Andrew, gave us a brief introduction and some sobering facts.
- The US has NO Recycling Policy....there are 10,000 landfills currently in operation...all with their own methods of dealing with trash
- The way materials are disposed of is a 19th century solution
- The #1 material that makes up landfills is Paper. How much paper? The US throws away enough paper every year to make a 12 foot wall from Los Angeles to New York City.
But, what Andrew talked about next is what resonated with me in a new way.
He took a piece of paper and asked, “What is used to make this?”
Yes, paper is very valuable.
He took a plastic bottle and asked, “What is used to make this?
Yes...oil is taken out of the earth...that is very difficult to do and a resource we can’t replace.
Yes, a plastic bottle is very valuable.
He took his gold wedding ring and held it up. “What is used to make this?”
Yes...Someone has to mine deep in the earth to find this precious metal...then make it into a ring. That is very difficult to do.
And, that is why metal is so valuable.
I don’t think there’s a way to comprehend the amount of materials that are coming in to these facilities...truck after truck....filled to capacity.
The amount of paper and plastic is astounding: Do you know how much of a landfill is made up of paper? 40%
And, tons of it gets buried just because it gets mixed in with food waste and can’t be recycled. Most of it could be saved and re-used, if people just understood how valuable it is and took responsibility to make sure it gets to the right place.
The Good News:
The Department of Energy states that a ton of paper made from recycled fibers conserves 7,000 gallons of water, up to 31 trees, 4,000 KWh of electricity and up to 60 pounds of air pollutants (not including carbon dioxide).
Recycling just ONE aluminum can is the equivalent of keeping a 100-watt light bulb burning for approximately four hours or having the television running for three hours.
Recycling just ONE plastic bottle can save enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for six hours.
What can you do?
1. Reduce - Stop Catalogs, Junk Mail and Phone Books:
Stop unwanted mail
Control commercial mail
Opt out of Phone Books
For local information: earth911.com
America Recycles Day is November 15th Take the pledge
College Recycling competition registration November 7th through January 22, 2012
Can you guess how many bottles are in one of these this bales? Would you believe 22,000?!