Recycling

Most commonly recycled objects and what they get turned into:


When researching the most commonly recycled materials, the organisation CARE2 came up as a popular search. the community of 38million people are actively standing together and making an 'extraordinary impact - locally, nationally and internationally'. They are doing this through the use of petitions and by supporting each other's campaigns. As well as this there are also informative pages on how you can do your bit with tackling climate change.

http://www.care2.com/causes/top-10-most-important-items-to-recycle.html

Top important items to recycle:

1. Aluminium - aluminium cans are 100% recyclable as well as having the ability to be recycled multiple times. The process of recycling the cans takes 95% less energy than making new cans and therefore can make a massive impact.

2. PET Plastic Bottles - it is statistically known that Americans will buy around 25 billion single serving bottles of water each year (Container Recycling Institute) of which 80% will end up in landfill. 
- Making plastic out of recycled resources uses two thirds less energy than making new plastic.

3. Newspaper -According to the Environmental Protection Agency, paper makes up about one-third of the municipal waste stream in the U.S. As it is one of the easiest materials to recycle it should be something that is easy to address!

Magazines/mixed paper - Recycled paper saves 60% of energy as well as generating 95% less air pollution than producing new paper. Recycling one ton of paper would save 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water. 

4. Cardboard - around 13% of the cardboard generated is part of the overall waste stream of materials. Approximately 90% of the 29million tons produced is used in our places of work and therefore is another easy material to recycle in mass.

5. Steel cans - Similar to aluminum, steel cans can be recycled multiple times. Recycling this material saves the equivalent energy power to one million households a year.  

6. Computers - Although not your typical way of recycling, an old yet still working computer could be donated to friends/family or to a non profit organisation. Doing so keeps the computer out of the waste stream. Non-working computers can be sent to recycling centres where they are dismantled and the valuable components are recovered and reused.