Proposal : recycling be mandatory - Term Paper Example

However, the question still lingers, how is this green? Going green is finding efficient strategies to lower energy consumption whilst maintaining an increase in production (Watson 17). Recycling reduces energy consumption by reducing the need for fresh raw materials, which in many cases are virgin materials that require energy-expending processes for extraction and purification. Therefore, recycling is a green process that saves energy consumption by availing already extracted and processed raw material, which is energy efficient in production, and lowers natural resource consumption.

Evidently, the environment is under serious threat. Owing to the massive amounts of garbage dumped into the water channels and ground annually (O’Leary 6). Globally, pollution is increasingly augmenting at an alarming rate. From toxic and radioactive waste to non-biodegradable plastic waste, these wastes deplete the environment and increase landfills. In that regard, it is paramount for all to engage in the safe management practices, in order to protect the environment and minimize pollution (Watson 18).

One sure way of achieving this goal is by employing recycling in daily practices at home, manufacturing and retail. How would recycling protect the environment? Perhaps recycling is the most efficient way of protecting the earth from depletion of its natural resource. Ubiquitous natural resources such as air and sunlight are present practically everywhere (Bond 2012). However, localized resources are only limited to a specific locality. Exploitation of the localized natural resources is beneficial as well as deleterious (Ona 25).

There are only a few inexhaustible natural resources; these are air, geothermal energy, and solar energy. All other resources found in nature are subject to depletion if unwisely managed. Minerals in particular are non-renewable resources. Therefore, continuous extraction of minerals from their ores depletes its finite quantity in the environment. Recycling can reduce this deleterious and energy expending process by providing a ready source of raw material (Watson 19). Recycling used aluminum cans, for instance, accounts for 43.

9 percent of the total mass of raw materials used in the can mills industry annually. Moreover, the recycling process conserves 95 percent of the energy requirement. According to United States Environmental Protection Authority, this figure totals up to 900 million British thermal units [BTUs], equivalent to energy consumption of 9 million households annually. Landfilling is another brutal factor affecting efficiency of environmental conservation. United States Environmental Protection Agency defines Landfilling as placement of material waste into the land in either controlled or uncontrolled manner.

Estimates show that collection of waste is approximately 222 million metric tons annually, and 54.3 percent of this is in the form of dumping at landfills. Apparently, landfills take up huge chunks of land and in the process squeezing local communities around it (O’Leary 15). Although, there are efforts to heighten the sanitary levels of the landfills, they still expel repulsive odors making the ambient inhabitable. Recycling, on the other hand, relieves the severity of pollution exhibited by the landfills, by reducing the mass of landfills.

Specifically, recycling inhibits over 32 percent of waste from release to landfills annually (Ona 41). This is an exemplary situation of turning garbage to gold, where companies exploit creative