Recycling

9 Pages 2139 Words

The topic of recycling has been around for almost thirty years. It was realized that simply "throwing" our problems out the window and into the landfill wasn't a permanent solution. Slowly we have tried to upgrade our process of recycling, reusing and reducing. Though the question remains. Do we do enough for recycling? How much longer can we wait to act until we are buried under our own trash. The time has come to bring recycling into the global spotlight.

On April 22, 1970 the first Earth Day was celebrated. First of many it kicked off a major Earth movement. That same year President Nixon passed the Environmental Protection Act. Complementing it six years later was the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The Recovery Act regulated disposal and treatment of solid waste. Prior to this, trash was either incinerated, burned in an open dump or landfilled. Seventeen years after this law was passed recycling still hadn't picked up immensely. 75% of trash still went to landfills, 13% was incinerated and only a meager 12% was recycled. That was in the year 1993, only four years ago. Of course a nation wide comparison doesn't truly do justice to waste disposal because of
concentration of people and exporting of waste. However on a local comparison the statistics are very similar. In 1993 16 thousand tons of garbage were produced in Tioga County and only 4 thousand tons were recycled. Three years later in 1996 our production of trash went up to about 17 thousand tons while we still only recycled 4 thousand tons of it. With statistics like these it is not a matter that requires much thought. Landfill space is constantly being used up; and even the most advanced incinerators still pollute the air, one option stands. Prices on natural resources are escalating and their abundance is dropping, one option remains. What kind of future will we leave for our children, one option stands.

Before we go into discussion of recycling some ground ru...