Reducing Your Recycling: Part 1
Before anyone starts screaming, “What, I thought I was supposed to recycle! This girl is crazy.” let me explain. I’m not advocating throwing recyclables in the trash to end up in a landfill. I’m talking about putting more focus on the first two parts of the environmentalist’s mantra - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve watched with perhaps a little too much pride as the pile of trash I’ve put out on Fridays has shrunk and the pile of recyclables I put out on Thursdays has grown. I have successfully reduced the amount of trash I generate. Recently I’ve realized that’s not enough. I need to now start reducing the amount of recycling I generate.
About a month ago, I started to see news reports stating that the demand for recyclables has dropped. The economic plunge has taken the recycling market off the cliff with it. According to an article on GreenBiz.com,
Consumers are buying fewer products made in China, and with fewer products being shipped overseas, there is a lesser need for boxes and packaging materials to move those items, according to The Journal of Commerce. Chinese producers, therefore, need fewer materials to make packaging and items.
“A lot of the material was going to China to make boxes for all the things they were shipping back to the United States,” Bruce Savage, spokesman for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries in Washington, told the Sacramento Bee. “When they aren’t producing products, they don’t need the packaging materials.”
The polar bears are drowning. Large numbers of fish are disappearing from the oceans. Bottled-water companies and farms are depleting the aquifers. Chemicals in cosmetics are linked to birth defects.
