Recycling tidbits to share with the unconvinced.

Are you sometimes called upon as the token environmentalist in a group to justify the time and, some would say, trouble of recycling? As with other things, some folks latch on to little tidbits that justify taking the shorter route to the trashcan instead of the longer path to the recycling bin. In fact, there's loads of information out there refuting common myths like, "It all goes in the landfill" or "Recycling is too expensive." Better yet, the information available will not only appeal to the "green" among us but the green in our pockets, as years after its inception in the Eighties, recycling programs have proven to save cities thousands, even millions of dollars per year.

In making the decision not to recycle, many folks use the example of New York City as an instance when a city had to forgo their recycling program due to budgetary constraints. Two years after calling recycling a $40 million drain on the city, however, NYC leaders realized that a redesigned, efficient recycling system could actually save the city $20 million, and they have now signed a twenty-year recycling contract. Well-run recycling programs do, in fact, cost less to operate than waste collection, landfilling, and incineration, with far fewer negative side effects.

And, on the job front, recycling creates 1.1 million U.S. jobs, of those fifteen thousand are in North Carolina and thirteen thousand are in Georgia. In order to get a sense of the scope of job creation, you have to follow the chain beyond the person who picks up your recycling on the curb. For every job collecting recyclables, there are twenty-six jobs in processing the materials and manufacturing them into new products.

Environmentally speaking, few would question the benefits of recycling, but here are a few examples of just how stunning a difference it can make. In a time when our air quality is a hot topic of discussion, especially in the mountains of Western North Carolina and in major cities like Atlanta, did you know that recycling results in a net reduction in ten major categories of air pollutants, in addition to eight major water pollutants? It takes ninty-five percent less energy to recycle aluminum than it does to make it from raw materials. Making recycled steel saves sixty percent, recycled newspaper forty percent, recycled plastics seventy percent, and recycled glass forty percent. Looking at these efficiencies on a larger scale, in 2000, recycling resulted in an annual energy savings equal to the amount of energy used in six million homes (over 660 trillion BTUs). In 2005, recycling is conservatively projected to save the amount of energy used in nine million homes (900 trillion BTUs).

One thing's for sure, in today's culture where practically everything is disposable, folks who believe in the benefits of recycling cannot stop singing its praises if we want to keep the creation of landfills at a minimum. The amount of waste disposed of in North Carolina has increased from 6.8 million tons in 1991 to 9.7 million tons in 2001; at the current rate of growth, NC will be disposing of as much as thirteen million tons per year by 2020. In Georgia, over 4.7 million tons of waste in was recycled into new Georgia-made products during 1995, that number continues to grow. With landfills costing over $250,000 an acre to develop, our consumer culture threatens to hit our wallets (not to mention the landscape) hard if we don't start dealing with our trash more efficiently.

Resources

NC's Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance (www.p2pays.org)

National Recycling Coalition (www.nrc-recyde.org).

Keep Georgia Beautiful (www.keepgeorgiabeautiful.org)

Leslie Huntley is the Project Coordinator for Quality Forward: Keep America Beautiful of Asheville and Buncombe County. Visit www.qualityforward.org for more information.