Ask a dozen people their thoughts on recycling, and you’ll get a dozen answers. Some are enthusiastic about the benefits, others may be sceptical, and most will probably have mixed feelings.
- Recycling in Surrey helps protect natural resources, reduce demand for virgin material extraction, save energy, cut pollution, and keep rubbish out of landfill.
- It reuses valuable materials already in circulation, lowers environmental impact compared with disposal, and supports a more circular approach to waste alongside reducing and reusing.
At EnviRecycle Surrey, we understand the full range of opinions on recycling, and we’re the first to say it isn’t the answer to the waste crisis. However, it’s a very important part of moving toward a circular economy. Here’s why:
Recycling reduces the need to extract virgin materials from the planet
The way our UK society currently produces the vast majority of goods still involves extracting virgin materials from our planet. And we’re using natural resources at a truly unsustainable rate. There’s even a day to recognise when we overshoot the biological resources Earth regenerates in a year: “Earth Overshoot Day.” Last year, it fell on July 28.
Not only does this extraction deplete natural resources and disrupt ecosystems, but it also consumes significant energy and often generates pollution.
Then the material must be processed, which also uses energy and often creates pollution. When recycled material is used to make a product instead, natural resources and energy are conserved. For example, manufacturing with recycled aluminium cans uses 95 per cent less energy than producing the same amount of aluminium from bauxite extracted from the Earth.
Recycling prevents rubbish from being landfilled or littered
Our current system for disposing of most of our rubbish is sending it to landfills. (In Surrey, we are doing really well with recycling 54%!) This “out of sight, out of mind” approach is not a good long-term solution for the planet’s health – or the health of the beings living on it.
Landfills are not designed to break down and decompose materials. Rubbish is tightly compacted and then buried in the earth. As organic materials break down in this oxygen-poor environment, they release methane, which is over 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
This methane can be continually produced for however long it takes for the materials to decompose, which can be hundreds of years, and is a primary contributor to global warming. It’s still unknown exactly how long it takes for plastics to break down, but it’s predicted that a plastic bottle can take up to 450 years to decompose. Other plastic items could take 1,000 years or more to break down into microplastics, which persist in the environment indefinitely. Then there are compostable and biodegradable items, which aren’t designed to break down in landfills. They either persist indefinitely or, due to a lack of oxygen, break down anaerobically, releasing methane.
As landfills break down, they produce “leachate,” a liquid that is pumped out and treated as hazardous waste. However, many landfills leak leachate, which seeps into the ground and can flow into our waterways. Studies have found that leachate can contain microplastics, which ultimately end up in the food and water consumed by humans and animals.
Recycling reuses valuable materials
Recycling creates new items from material that’s already in circulation. When something goes directly to a landfill or is incinerated, we waste all the natural resources, energy, and materials used to create it. When we recycle, we use materials to their fullest potential and conserve natural resources. This will become especially important as we continue to overshoot Earth’s resource limits.
While recycling is an imperfect solution, it is a major improvement over sending rubbish to landfills or incinerating it. Third-party-verified life cycle assessments (LCAs) show that our recycling models have a lower environmental impact than traditional solutions across eight major categories (including global warming). On average, our models are 45% better for the planet.
Ultimately, recycling is one of many ways we can eliminate waste and invest in the planet. Reducing and reusing come first. And you can feel confident that you’re helping the planet when you recycle items through EnviRecycle.
