When you think about Planet Earth seriously, then you understand why we need to do everything we can to save as much of it as we can.
That is a profound statement, but thinking about how much we waste and how little we recycle, it is true.
We drown in the paper every day with all the magazines and newspapers and general mail that we get every single day. Recycling is a good solid way to stop waste. Producing paper uses a lot of our Natural Resources and pollutes our water and our air, and although I am not talking about stopping all that, there are some things we can do and that some are doing to lessen the amount of damage and waste.
Recycling saves 35% less pollution of our water and 74% of our air. This is considerable. If you recycle at least 1 ton of paper (that seems like a lot, I know, but just think about how much paper you collect in one week) it gets rid of at least three cubic feet of landfill space. Know this, as the paper breaks down in the landfill, it sends Methane gas into our air. When you combine methane gas with carbon dioxide, you get Greenhouse gas.
Recycling paper also helps reduce energy costs. When you compare how much energy it takes to make new paper pulp, recycling old paper gives us 40% less power usage. If you recycle 1 ton of paper you could save enough energy to cool and heat the average household for six months.
We kill a lot of trees to make paper every day. Recycling also saves trees. Think about this, if you recycle 1 ton of paper you can save two tons of wood. If we could recycle half of our paper requirements we could easily save twenty million acres of trees. Remarkable.
It’s not hard to think about saving our trees, we need them every day. Think about the heat of the summer, if we had no shade, it would be much more difficult to bear. Even in winter, trees block us from the weather and keep us cozier in our homes when that cold winter wind blows. Also when you think about recycling and saving energy, who doesn’t want to save some money on heating and cooling costs?
It’s not that hard to find recycled paper, some printing businesses advertise that they use it. It comes in many forms from the things you use in everyday life like paper towels and napkins to the newspaper and magazines you read every single day. You can see on the grocery store shelves that coffee filters and paper towels come to you recycled.
If every single one of us would be more mindful of the things we do every day to ruin our planet, to remember only to buy recycled paper and to recycle as much as we can ourselves, we just might be able to hang on to this great planet earth for a bit longer.