Recycling

Recycling Recycling is the salvaging of used items to be used again. Everyday people throw items into recycling bins. Not much thought is put into this seemingly easy action of recycling. What many people don’t know is what happens afterwards. Recycling is not a new idea, though more focus has been placed on it recently in the United States.

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**1. History in America**
Seattle, Washington was the first city to enforce a price for garbage disposal based on how much trash a household produces. They did this by charging a certain price per trash bin. This action caused an increase in the recycling in Seattle and people became more aware of the amount of garbage they used. Paper is a product that is used and discarded all the time. In 1690 the Rittenhouse mill located inPennsylvaniawas the first paper mill in the United States. It later became one of the first to recycle paper in the early 1700s. Like paper, metal is a commonly used material that is used and can be recycled. When a country enters a war one thing they will do is make their metal into equipment. This is what Americans did during World War Two. Prices were going up so the government decided to collect used steel products to use in manufacturing supplies. The Boy Scouts of America and many others collected bottle caps turning them in. America has since continued in its effort to help reuse its resources.

**2. Basic Recycling information**
There are three main steps in the recycling process. They are collection, separation, and reuse. Collection can be done in two ways, the first being curbside collection. Curbside collection is when people put out their recyclable items out by the curb for the recycling truck to come get them. There are three types: dual-stream, single-stream, and pay-as-you-go. Dual-stream being most popular has to bins one for containers the other paper. More controversial there is single-stream with one bin requiring no separation. This is believed to cause more contamination of material but is unproven. Pay-as-you-go is not technically a collection but charges per trash bag in return for free recycling. There are restrictions on what can be taken such as scrap metal which needs to be smaller than 30 inches and 30 pounds, and cardboard which needs to be flattened no larger than 3 feet by 3 feet. Otherwise people are to bring these items to a designated area in the city for it to be collected. At the plant objects are separated into glass, metal, or paper. Then workers sort through everything again removing garbage. The materials are then made into new products. Some of the most common items recycled are newspapers, paper, cardboard, aluminum cans, metal cans, glass, and plastic. With plastic being greatly used, it is important to check with the local recycling services to find which types of the seven plastics that can be used the most common being 1 and 2. Of the billion plastic bags used a year less than 1% are being recycled. With these programs the average American recycles and composts 32.3% of their garbage and of the remaining trash around 60-70% are still recyclable.

**3. Paper Recycling**
The main ingredient in paper is plant fiber making it a biodegradable material. The first step in making paper out of wood is to crush it into separate fibers and mix with water. Bleach is added before the mixture is poured on to the Fourdrinier machine it turn the paper white. The machine was made in 1803 by Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier. On the machine belt water is drained through the material and starts to dry. The dry paper is then smoothed with rollers in a process called calendering. Recycled paper goes through almost the identical steps only with a few extras like de-inking. The only problem with de-inking is that its byproduct is a toxic sludge that needs to be burned or placed in a landfill. Paper otherwise can be recycled until the fibers wear out.

**4. Glass Recycling**
Only 28% of glass bottles were recycled in 2007 and only 23.4% of all glass in 2008. This being said glass is a material that can be recycled repeatedly forever if done right. There are three colors of recyclable glass: brown, green, and clear. Glass should be separated into bins based on color. Glasses of different hues cannot be recycled together because special ingredients are used to make the specific colors. The glass is brought to a recycling plant where it is called raw cullet and again is separated into the section of the facility designated to the color. It is placed on a conveyor belt while workers remove garbage. The impactor crushes the raw cullet so a vacuum and magnets remove metal. The small pieces referred to as cullet is combined with the three materials to make glass. These three materials are sand, soda ash, and limestone. The use of old glass has cut the amount of the raw materials greatly. For every 1 ton of glass used in recycling 1.2 tons of raw materials are saved.

**5. Metal Recycling**
Metal has always been seen as a valuable resource and has been reused in different styles. When being recycled the metals have to be separated to avoid mixing them. For the recycling of steel cans, which are covered in tin, detinning plants have been made. There they are able to dissolve the tin off allowing both the steel and tin to be salvaged. Over half of the steel in theUnited States is recycled and twenty percent of all the steel has been provided by minimills which are only used for scrap steel. Only needing heat reforming metal is relatively easy to do. That explains why metal is one of the most recycled materials in the world.

**Analysis**
Recycling has been a part of the history of the United States since the 1600s. Today the benefits of recycling are widely known. The decision to recycle has been influenced by the environmental discoveries in this country and it has played a part in influencing the way we live our lives today. It is become so embedded into the public that now it has become a part of our culture as Americans.

A major benefit of recycling is that it helps our Earth. It has helped to reduce the number of harmful chemicals that enter the atmosphere. It has been realized that rotting materials make Methane gas. Rotting material is what fills the landfills and often times the way landfills are set up allows the gas to become trapped underground. This is dangerous because when Methane gas is trapped, it can lead to explosions. Along with Methane gas, the waste produces other chemicals that combine to make a material called leachate which is deadly. It is known to leak into the soil and water sources, contaminating them. These dangers can be prevented if people recycle instead of putting reusable items into the trash.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">The major factor that has influenced an increased popularity in recycling in the United States is economic pressure. One of the most known periods for this was World War Two. There were not enough materials to support both the war and those on the home front. People had to ration supplies and were asked to return metal, rubber, and other needed materials to the store to be recycled into things for the war. People were willing to do this because Americans were proud of their country and wanted to support the military.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">Like economic struggles, the realization of environmental issues opened the public to recycling. The Environmental Movement, which wanted to help reduce the amount of air and water pollution, began in the 1960’s. In 1963 the Clean Air Act was created and was embraced later in 1970. This Act called for less air pollution. This caused incinerators used to burn cities’ garbage to be shut down. When the garbage was being burned, it released toxins into the air which added to the air pollution. This led to the use and development of recycling plants and programs.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"> The popularity of recycling has influenced manufactures and companies to watch what materials they use. Along with the producers, the buyers were also affected by recycling. They began questioning what products to buy based on the amount of waste created by the item and whether it can be recycled. In the late 1980’s the early 1990’s, the demand for recycled items was low, but it was still growing. Therefore, some companies that used recycled products were losing money going into 1993 because the price for recycling their products was higher than the cost for producing new ones. However there were companies that were able to maintain profits; a company’s success depended on the materials it used.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">Some materials are cheaper to recycle than to make from raw materials. Glass can be reused in the process of making new glass, which is easier than to get the materials fresh. Like glass, aluminum is easier to reuse than to find the raw materials needed to make it from scratch. Reusing these substances is more cost effective for recycling businesses because the demand for these products remains high even though they are recycled.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">One thing that makes recycled substances cheaper is the fact that they take “less energy to produce”. By reusing glass, all the energy needed to receive and transport the otherwise-needed materials is saved. Similarly, aluminum takes far less energy to recycle versus using new products to create aluminum. Recycling it only takes around 5% of the energy used to make it the first time. This reduction in the amount of energy was a factor that led people to want to start recycling businesses.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">Today thousands of jobs have been created in the recycling field. These jobs help the economy and support families across the country. Conserving the natural resources now helps to ensure them for the future generations to come. This idea of helping the next generation has been the goal of the United States since the day it was born. It was that idea that is also responsible for the recycling that occurs to today.



<span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; text-align: center;">Works Cited

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<span style="color: #0e0e0e; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">recycling in the United States

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