Ready-to-wear recyclables turn your trash into the latest fashions.Imagine wearing a pile of trash to school. Sticky soda bottles, old rubber tires, and used cardboard boxes would trail behind you as you clunk down the hallway. What a mess! But what if those scraps were recycled into new shirts, pants, and shoes? Flip the page to check out our gallery of goods made from garbage. Everything shown contains either postconsumer post·con·sum·er adj. Of or relating to products that have been used and recycled by consumers: paper made from postconsumer waste. materials--stuff that's been recycled after it's used--or preconsumer materials--factory leftovers that would otherwise be bound for the dump. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), independent agency of the U.S. government, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1970 to reduce and control air and water pollution, noise pollution, and radiation and to ensure the safe handling and , Americans dump some 200 million tons of trash every year--more than any other nation. By the year 2000, experts say, 80 percent of our landfills (dump sites) will be full. We could build more incinerators to burn our trash, but these furnaces often give off contaminants that can pollute pol·lute v. 1. To make unfit for or harmful to living things, especially by the addition of waste matter; contaminate. 2. To make less suitable for an activity, especially by the introduction of unwanted factors. the air. It's a good thing recycling is in fashion. Those two-liter soda bottles you throw away, for instance, can be recycled into sweaters. If we recycled every one of the 3 billion bottles we trash every year, we'd have enough plastic to make polyester sweaters for nearly half the people living in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. ! Turn the page to find out how trash is transformed into the latest fashions. |
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