Benefits of Recycling

• Reduces your trash

• Saves our natural resources

• Extends the life of our landfills

• Saves energy

• Reduces pollution

• Reduces litter

• Creates jobs

In order to truly grasp why it is important to recycle, it is important to understand the concept of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). LCA is one considers the total impact on the environment throughout a product’s complete life through the disposal process. It is an approach that starts from cradle and ends at the grave.

Take for example aluminum cans. The biggest impact that aluminum cans have on the environment is during the manufacturing process. It takes an extremely high amount of energy to mine bauxite, and then to extract aluminum from the bauxite. It would be much more energy efficient to recycle an old can, as you can skip the mining process entirely.

The very best approach is to never use the resource to begin with. If you must use the resource, then try to use less. A third approach is to reuse the resource. This is easy to remember with the common recycling acronym of the 4 R’s. Recycle, Reduce, Reuse, Recover and most importantly use common sense!

There is a new link on the website to OurEarth.org, which is a non-profit organization from John Hopkins University. The organization's goal is to educate people about the environment and teach people how to be environmentally aware.