Good Example Of Essay On Waste Recycling Saves Resources
Type of paper: Essay
Topic: Recycling, Waste, Business, Garbage, Production, Environment, Life, Idea
Pages: 7
Words: 1925
Published: 2020/12/09
Valuable Entrepreneurial Idea
Valuable Entrepreneurial Idea
Business idea that I find interesting, valuable and promising for the future is producing some items and goods from the recycled garbage. I think that it has a potential, as there is really a great amount of garbage on the planet and it is increasing all the time. It means that we have to find a way to make use of it and starting a business dedicated to giving second life to recycled goods can be a great help in it. Moreover, this business is socially useful and helps to save our planet.
Environmental experts are all convinced that recycling will affect the climate protection - it can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, guilty of the formation of the greenhouse effect. Therefore, it is time for each of us to begin to do something (Molineux, Fentiman & Gange, 2009). For most people, the process ends at the recycling dumpsters, but for garbage, it is just beginning. As a business idea, there are many possibilities for development and valuable use. But first it is necessary to see why recycling garbage is a valuable idea in today’s world.
If we take, for example, aluminum, recycling packaging from 6 aluminum cans saves energy, which would be enough to run a TV for 18 hours or 100-watt bulb for 24 hours. If we have processed all the 50 billion cans thrown into landfills last year, we would have saved the energy equivalent of 15 million barrels of crude oil. Furthermore, production of recycled aluminum cans saves 95% power compared with production from raw materials.
Savings in the production of other goods from recycled materials is equally impressive. Recycled steel (used in the manufacture of tin cans) saves 60% of energy. Recycled paper and glass save 40%, plastic - 70%. There is something else besides saving energy. New raw materials are extracted from mines, oil wells and monoculture plantations (which, incidentally, are deprived of species diversity and stability to survive, compared to natural forests). By participating in the recycling of garbage, you reduce the need for these sources of raw materials and do not support companies that produce a lot of waste and pollute the environment.
However, it must be said that the recycling process also requires energy. Ordinary consumers have to force manufacturers to increase their responsibility and turn waste management in resource management (Choi et al., 2009). This entails a review of the basic principles of our consumption. Recycling shown to be effective in respect of any materials. But the primary raw materials still need to be extracted, processed, delivered to the company, where it becomes a commodity. Therefore, it is necessary to revise the entire life cycle of a product that we get. After the purchase and use, we are taking goods or packaging to recycling. However, the product itself must be made from recycled materials, to reduce the production of the new. We must act in accordance with natural principles, in which at the end of the product life cycle becomes a breeding ground for new products to start their life cycle. Many cities across many continents have decided to bring the level of waste to zero over the next 15 years (Horne, Maller and Lane, 2011). Their leadership encourages, and in some cities obliges residents to be attentive to the choice of materials, sort garbage, turn food waste into compost. They believe that the ideal society will never be able to achieve, but you can try to approach it so that the results were worth the effort.
Second life of garbage
If you exactly follow the guidelines for waste separation, about 90% of what you are throwing away, gets a new life (Kalpana et al., 2009). Printed publications do not necessarily come back to you in the form of a Sunday paper, but it can get to your house as a cardboard egg carton or box of cereal for breakfast. Plastic bottle of milk can hardly come back to you again in the form of a bottle of milk. Rather, it turns into points for diving or a mat, and will be able to live another life, before going to the landfill. Aluminum cans can be recycled endlessly. They often turn into auto parts and utensils.
A small percentage of waste does not go to recycling typically due to incorrect sorting. If you do not know what to do with that or other debris, do not throw it at random to one of the sorting baskets. For the manufacture of recycled paper, plastic and metal, there must be uniform feedstock without inclusions of other materials. Who needs a piece of plastic in the paper? Of course, there are still companies that are quietly dropping the sorted garbage on conventional landfills, but I hope that these residual effects will soon disappear and give way to a conscious attitude to the environmental situation in the world.
The value of the symbol triangle of arrows
The difference between production and consumption waste
Consumer waste are goods that have completed their life cycle as consumer goods and are intended for disposal, if not recycling. Production waste are the remnants of raw materials, not included in the process of manufacturing of consumer goods. They definitely need to be processed and not sent to landfill or incinerators. It is a good idea for people to choose in the store those goods, which include those secondary raw materials. This will help to reduce the area of landfills, reduces the need for the extraction of natural resources and leave recycle loop in constant use. Recycled waste consumption can be found in many products - from shoes and pencils to detergent and garbage bags.
Landfills
Landfills is a headache, because they are the largest source of methane - a gas that causes the greenhouse effect. Methane is trapping heat 21 times better than carbon dioxide. Other gases given off by piles of garbage can join and poison the air. In every fifth pollution site contaminated by hazardous substances and requiring special types of cleaning, the former landfill is guilty. To summarize, landfills are hazardous to health and the environment, so you should try to recycle waste as much as possible.
One soldier in the field
Consumers have a huge impact on the environment by their multiplicity. The average family of 4, sending to the processing plastic, per year prevents the release of 155 kg of carbon dioxide by reducing the production of oil and natural gas. Recycling of waste paper of a year's supply of Sunday newspapers reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 125 kg. When a person starts treating carefully what he/she buys, what and how throws away, the results will be impressive.
How things work
After rapid development in 90 years, the current level of recycling froze at around 30-35%. Some people do not see this as a big problem, because in comparison with the situation 30 years ago, this level increased by 3 times. Why bother? We just think that we win this war. Yes, the recycling rate has increased, but increased also the amount of waste. By almost 20%. And each year the total amount of waste is growing. Some experts call this "the paradox of interest". Those who donate trash for recycling, according to their duty fulfilled, buy everything they like. Buy, use and throw away more rubbish (He et al., 2013). Processing industry simply cannot keep up with the growing mountains of trash. So, there is a lot of work for each person. Around 75% of waste in landfills could be recycled. Even in countries with well-developed infrastructure for recycling a number of responsible citizens would be 2 times more. Simple calculations show that if the remaining people began to participate in the program of garbage collection, the effect on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions would be equal to the disappearance of 75 million roads with cars. But you need to do nothing at all: sort waste, use less packaging, choose reusable disposable goods. However, the stagnation in the development of recycling is not necessarily a bad indicator. In past years, there has been a strong and successful growth period of stabilization and in the future we have to grow (Maller, Horne and Dalton, 2012).
Payback of recycling
Payback in this industry is estimated by completely different criteria than conventional production. It is like comparing apples and oranges. In terms of cost of new resources, recycling is clearly justified. If viewed from the perspective of urban costs, there is need to take into account the savings on landfill space and the cost of transportation (Singh & Pandey, 2012). In addition, proper organization of recycling programs with wide involvement of population creates jobs and, ultimately, is more profitable now than the creation of new landfills. So, the movement of processing began from a desire to preserve nature, but now it applies to trade in goods and trade resources.
Landfills and incinerators, on the contrary, turning resources into waste, cost the city authorities a lot of money (Simmons, Lewis and Barrett, 2000). Business executives are finally starting to realize that if the remains of production have at least some value for further production, it is better to sell them to a pulp and paper mill plant polymers or metallurgical plant than pay for it in the garbage dump. By the same principle act urban waste collection programs. But in many cities because of the low rate of participation in the program processing, costs greatly exceeded income. So, the program starts to pay off when the profit from the sale of recyclable materials exceeds the cost of its collection and sorting.
The success of movement for waste recycling
About success, it is still early to say. About 80% of the goods and packaging on our planet are ejected after the first use (Zoorob and Suparma, 2000). Therefore, the problem is not so much processing as in the system in which manufacturers are coming up with the goods, not caring what will happen to them next. Thus, we buy junk in company to the product. And it does not matter, we burn it, bury or recycle - a colossal damage to nature is applied.
Recycling paper, for example, is toxic for the manufacture of paint on surfaces of paper and cardboard. But if the manufacturer cares about recycling their goods (as they do in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and other visionary states), then the problem of toxicity occurs because the paint of petrochemical products still in primary production is replaced by eco-friendly.
Idea for the use of recycled wastes
I think that if we express creativity in the use of recycled waste, we can reach better results and raise public awareness. I think that producing great clothes and accessories is a great idea in this niche. If people understand that by buying these clothes they make their contribution into saving the planet and start thinking about the problems outlined above more. If they see the beauty and brightness in what can be done from recycled materials, it is motivating and inspiring.
References
Choi, Y. W., Moon, D. J., Kim, Y. J. and Lachemi, M., 2009. Characteristics of mortar and concrete containing fine aggregate manufactured from recycled waste polyethylene terephthalate bottles. Construction and Building Materials, 23(8), pp.2829-2835.
Molineux, C. J., Fentiman, C. H. and Gange, A. C., 2009. Characterising alternative recycled waste materials for use as green roof growing media in the UK. Ecological Engineering, 35(10), pp.1507-1513.
Zoorob, S. E. and Suparma, L. B., 2000. Laboratory design and investigation of the properties of continuously graded Asphaltic concrete containing recycled plastics aggregate replacement (Plastiphalt). Cement and Concrete Composites, 22(4), pp.233-242.
Kalpana, D., Cho, S. H., Lee, S. B., Lee, Y. S., Misra, R. and Renganathan, N. G., 2009. Recycled waste paper—A new source of raw material for electric double-layer capacitors. Journal of Power Sources, 190(2), pp.587-591.
Simmons, C., Lewis, K. and Barrett, J., 2000. Two feet-two approaches: a component-based model of ecological footprinting. Ecological economics, 32(3), pp.375-380.
He, Q. G., Huang, C. Y., Chang, H. and Nie, L. B., 2013. Progress in Recycling of Plastic Packaging Wastes. In Advanced Materials Research (Vol. 660, pp. 90-96).
Singh, P. B. and Pandey, K. K., 2012. Green marketing: policies and practices for sustainable development. Integral Review, 5(1), pp.22-30.
Kaffine, D. T., 2014. Scrap Prices, Waste, and Recycling Policy. Land Economics, 90(1), pp.169-180.
Maller, C., Horne, R. and Dalton, T., 2012. Green renovations: Intersections of daily routines, housing aspirations and narratives of environmental sustainability. Housing, Theory and Society, 29(3), pp.255-275.
Horne, R., Maller, C. and Lane, R., 2011. Remaking home: The reuse of goods and materials in Australian households. Material geographies of household sustainability, pp.89-111.
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