Recycling Saves

Here is a copy of my speech's rough draft. It turned out shorter and more concise once I gave it...enjoy? LOL

With the big “green movement” that started back in the 70’s and continues on today, most people have become more aware about recycling. You know you should do it. You hear a lot about it today. But do you actually think about it? Do you think about what happens when you throw that pop can in the trash instead of the recycling bin? Do you think about the affects it has on the environment? As college students with a busy academic and social life, we tend to just tune out all the information about recycling. We tend to not care.

Well I am here to tell you today that recycling matters, and recycling saves. It saves energy, saves space, saves the economy, and saves money. I want you to know that recycling is an important issue, and a big one at that. I shall cite some statistics today about recycling, And I hope that when I am through, you shall know a little more about the benefits that come from recycling, and be inspired to recycle more.

Recycling takes items out of the main waste stream by turning them into something more useful. Something new. Not only does this save the time and energy needed to haul the loads far distances to landfills, but it saves energy by making them into new things. Let me give you a few examples.  According to Oberlin College’s extensive research on recycling, Making paper from recycled paper requires only 60% of the energy that is required to make paper from new wood pulp. That is a 40% electricity savings! In one year, a supermarket can go through over 6 million paper bags. Imagine if all the paper bags from all the grocery stores in the US were recycled? Imagine how much energy that would save!! However, paper is not the only source that saves an incredible amount of energy. The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can be enough to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours! Likewise, recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to power an 100-watt light bulb for twenty hours. When you throw away an aluminum can, you waste as much energy as if you had filled the can half full of gasoline, and poured it on the ground. Manufacturing recycled aluminum cans takes 95% less energy! Think about it. Recycling saves energy.

To provide some contrast to how much energy we can save by recycling, ponder how much of recyclable materials we throw away on a regular basis. Each year, enough plastic wrap is thrown away to shrink wrap Texas.  Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet. More than 20 million Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. And believe it not, ALL that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it so most it goes in the trash!

Which leads me to my next point of where all this garbage goes. The answer? To landfills. This is exactly why recycling is such a big issue.

Everything you do affects directly or indirectly everything else on the earth. Recycling is a big solution to a big problem. That problem is garbage! The average American creates 4 and 1/2 lbs of garbage each day.  This adds up to almost a ton of trash per person, per year. This means that the average American is throwing away 600xs their average body weight a year! That is huge! And where does all this trash go? To landfills.

And what does this garbage do as it sits in landfills? Rots. That is a landfills’ purpose. To allow trash to sit and decompose. To sit and waste away. What a waste when you think about it! According to the Environmental Protection Agency, The US dumps more than 100 million tons of trash into landfills each year. 75% of this garbage is recyclable. 75%! Yet American’s recycling rate is only 32%. 32% you say, well hey, that is not bad! That is pretty good! Not really. That means the remaining 68% of the 100 million tons of trash annually being thrown away is not recycled. 60 million tons thrown into landfills to have no further purpose than smelling up a large plot of land. How can this be a good thing? It certainly is not being efficient. If we recycled all of the 75% that is able to be recycled, we would have 75% less garbage in our landfills. 75% less land needed for garbage disposal, and therefore 75% more land that can be used for something else. Recycling saves space.

Recycling a ton of “waste” has twice the economic impact of burying it in the ground. It is pretty obvious that a landfill near your home decreases the property value. After all, garbage smells! That is exactly the point of hauling it far away, so we don’t have to live by it, cause who would want to? Right? Well, since recycling reduces the amount of space needed for landfills, less landfills are needed. This means there are less houses that are near landfills, and this keeps property values up, and homeowners happy!

 Not only does it keep property values up, but recycling also creates jobs for people. All of the centers that melt down and process the items to be recycled need people to work in them, file paperwork for them, and don’t forget the workers that go pick up the recycles at the end of your driveway! Recycling centers and enterprises employ over 1 million workers nationwide. You may have noticed the numerous recycle bins around campus. Well in large businesses, such as here at NWC, workers are needed to service these bins. According to StarTribune, the metrodome recycles more beverage containers than any other stadium in the country. Workers are needed to collect the recycles from these bins too! According to the National Recycling Coalition, Recycling jobs (on average) pay $100 dollars more in every salary and wage vs. a job at a landfill. This year, recycling accounts for 85,000 jobs and generates $4 billion in salaries and wages. 

Now here is a good incentive on recycling - Recycling not only creates jobs, but it is also is saving money. You are taxed on every lb of trash that is thrown away. I’ll give you an example of how this affects us. According to Jim Rinehart, the facilities manager here at NWC, the city of Roseville taxes 70% of all the garbage that is thrown away. NWC threw away 344 tons of garbage last year. That is a lot of lbs of garbage that is being taxed. As stated earlier, recycling takes items out of the main garbage stream. This means that when you recycle your pop can, that pop can’s weight is now not being taxed since it is recycled instead of thrown away. This saves the college money immediately. In contrast to that 344 tons of trash that NWC threw away, NWC only recycled 42 tons. This is roughly 12% of recycles out of all those 344 tons of trash. Remember the stat that said 75% of garbage is recyclable? Yet we are only recycling 12%!! This is unacceptable. We need to change that by recycling more. On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill. So then, versus sending garbage to a landfill, we save $20 per ton of recycled items. This doesn’t even factor in the tax that we now do not have to pay on the recyclable items! Recycling saves money. 

I have cited a lot of statistics. They might have bored you, they might have inspired you. But what I hope you take away from this is not a mind dulled from information, but knowing that what we do today does affect the rest of the world. Saving energy, saving space, and aiding the economy are just three of the many ways recycling benefits us. I encourage you to be a good steward of these resources that God gave us to work with. Be responsible and wisely reuse your trash by recycling it, instead of burying it in a landfill. Put a paper bag or extra bin next to your regular garbage can in your dorm room. Every time you go to throw something away, stop yourself and check to see if it is recyclable. You are given the choice to recycle. Please take up this advantage and just do it! I promise you your pop can shall be much happier as a new pop can than buried under a banana peel. 

Thank you.