Recycling: The World Depends on It

If you're like me you've spent your whole life doing one thing and one thing only to trash: throw it out. After all, that's what my parents did. There was never any talk of recycling back then. Newspapers, plastic milk jugs, aluminum pop cans, and everything else went right into the trashcan when we were finished with it. I always thought that was the right thing to do. Boy was I ever wrong!

I bet most people who decide to start recycling have a point in their lives where they realize that the world is in bad shape and humans are the cause of it. And it's at this moment that they begin recycling. My turning point happened while watching Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". If you haven't watched it yet, stop what you're doing right now and go rent it. Everyone should see this documentary. It opened my eyes to what's really going on with our planet. The United States is causing more global warming than any other country in the world. We are a massive consuming machine that's spewing out garbage faster than we can bury it. That sickens me. After watching the movie I started talking to my wife about things we could do to help. I would love to trade in my Blazer and buy an electric car but it's just not practical right now. I'd also love to use solar panels to generate the electricity for our house, but that would be far too expensive at this time. So, our conversation eventually settled onto recycling.

Think one family can't make a difference? I did some simple math. We go through at least twelve bottles of flavored water in my house a week, sometimes more. In a year that means six hundred twenty four plastic bottles are going into a landfill somewhere! The same with pop cans. Six or seven hundred aluminum cans were buried in the ground last year because I was too lazy to put them in a bag and take them to the recycling center near me. Try this at your home. How many newspapers do you throw out a year? Milk jugs? Mouthwash bottles? Cereal boxes? The numbers are staggering if you estimate how many must be going to landfills when you factor in everyone in your neighborhood. Now imagine your whole city!

It's actually very easy to recycle once you get started. My local recycling center has a web site so I researched information on there about what they accepted and how to prepare it. Next I went down to Lowe's and bought three thirty-two gallon plastic garbage cans totaling thirty-six bucks. I also bought trash bags for ten bucks and a plastic tray designed to hold newspapers for about seven bucks. When I got home I printed out labels on my computer and taped them to the lids. They read "aluminum cans", "plastic #1", and "plastic #2". Almost all plastic containers have a little number with a triangle around it embossed on them somewhere. There are higher numbers but the recycling center near me only accepts numbers one and two so that's why I only have them on the lids. I use an old box to store cereal boxes and cardboard.

Now when we finish reading a newspaper, drink a bottle of water or can of pop we take them out to the garage and place them in the proper container. When one of them is filled, we take it down to the recycling center and keep all that stuff from clogging up a landfill. Look around your house. There are all kinds of containers that can be recycled very easily. All you have to do is become aware of them. You don't have to transform your whole life to make a positive difference on the environment. All it takes is a few bucks, a little bit of research, and retraining yourself to stop throwing useful things out. If I can do it, anyone can. Please watch the DVD "An Inconvenient Truth" and give recycling a try today. Don't wait. Our sweet mother earth depends on you!