Recycling

Recycling

What is Recycling?

Recycling is used materials made into new products to prevent waste of useful materials. Recycling is important because it saves environmental conditions and reduces pollution, Saves natural resources, saves space for waste disposal, reduces the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling also helps people and companies save  a lot of money and has been demanded for the replacement of  production of new products from ‘virgin’ materials. The savings made include the whole production process starting from sourcing the raw materials, transferring them  to the  places of production, processing and manufacturing. These used materials are sorted and processed to be used as ‘raw materials’ for the production of new products.

Stages Of Recycling

There are 3 stages of recycling. The first stage is collecting, sorting and cleaning. The materials are collected and took to drop-off recycling centres. When the recycled materials have been collected, they go to a recovery facility where they are sorted. The sorting process usually involves a combination of mechanical sorters, magnets, forced air, optics and manual sorting by workers. After the materials have been sorted, next is the processing facility. This is where the materials are converted into usable material. Plastics are shredded and paper is soaked in water.

The second stage in the process is manufacturing. In the manufacturing stage of recycling, the manufacturers create new products from all the different recycled materials. The third stage is buying products made from recycled materials. When buying products, look out for the recycling symbol which could be located on either the front or back of the product. Also check the ingredients list. Just because a product has a recycling symbol doesn't always mean that a product was made from recycled material. Check to see what the percentage of Post Consumer content is. Post Consumer means that the material was previously used and has been recycled.

Recycling is part of the trend towards using less of the worlds resources and conserving the resources that are left. Also recycling results in a much smaller impact on the environment so that more of the world’s forests etc are preserved.