How Does Recycling Affect the Environment

How Does Recycling Affect The Environment

Recently there has been a growing amount of interest and concern for the environment. Due to this, people are starting to look into new ways to recycle and help conserve the earth’s natural resources. Unfortunately, recycling alone is not enough. We still have a long way to go to “clean” up the earth and create a sustainable environment for future generations.

As we are now beginning to realize, humans are destroying large portions of the environment. While part of our trouble is our fast-growing population (in the past 200 years, our population has sextupled), we also have to be more environmentally conscious. Pollution is becoming more and more rampant and government standards aren't nearly strict enough, or, when they are, they are not being enforced. It is important to recycle, and do what each of us can do to help preserve our environment for future generations.

Recycling does three things directly related to improving the World’s environmental condition. Recycling helps us consume less new materials Recycling will reduce the energy we need, and recycling helps control waste deposited in landfills.

First and foremost, recycling helps save the world’s precious resources from being used up. For example, we can recycle newspapers, cardboard boxes, and junk mail. All of these can save trees from being destroyed. Trees are important and critical to our environment and ecosystem. In elementary biology we learned that trees provide us with the oxygen we need, while also removing carbon dioxide from the air. Moreover, many plants and animals rely on trees for their survival. The forest also houses many plants and animals, and cutting down their forests has caused many species to dwindle.

Recycling, helps reduce the amount of garbage placed into landfills. Landfills can require large amounts of space, and recycling will help eliminate the need for new landfills.

Recycling also is beneficial to the environment - certain components, like batteries, can be harmful to the environment, and it is important to recycle these. For example, old computer monitors can contain large amounts of lead.

About the Author
Noah Williams is an active environmentalist who provides educational environmental content to Organic Items http://www.organic-items.com and he occasionally posts content to Perennial Gardens http://www.perennial-gardens.com

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