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What is recycling?
Home » Manufacturing » Recycling » What is recycling?Recycling is a process in which certain consumed materials can be reused to prevent the consumption of new materials, thus helping improve the environment. The process also eliminates waste, as some of the items which would normally be thrown away in the garbage can be recycled and put to good use. This is the universal symbol for recycling:
If you see this symbol on any product, it means that product is recyclable. Some of the most commonly recycled materials are paper, plastic, glass, aluminum and steel.
Recycling is usually pressed by the government especially during difficult financial times and times of war. The biggest worldwide push came during World War II, when every country involved in the war pressed its citizens to begin recycling, especially focusing on aluminum. Organizations like the Boy Scouts of America and many others began conscientious efforts to assist the country in its war by recycling all they could. Countries involved in the war which didn't have access to a plethora of natural resources, like Japan and some others, continued these strong recycling efforts even after the war concluded. As the 1970s arrived, the United States had another strong recycling push because of the rise in energy costs.
Several events during the 1980s were instrumental in increasing public interest in recycling and environmental assistance. In 1981, a city in Canada called Kitchener, Ontario, began a blue box recycling program. Households were given a blue box in which to discard glass, cardboard, aluminum, paper, and steel. In the last 25 years, the program has grown to the point that over 90% of households in Ontario utilize it, collectively recycling over 660,000 tons of waste each year. Ontario's program has inspired many other countries to follow suit, and now 40 million households from one side of the world to the other are using the blue box program or some variation of it.
In 1987, a barge containing 6 million pounds of garbage left New York and headed for Morehead City, North Carolina, to drop off its trash. While the barge, called the Mobro 4000, was en route, officials in Morehead City caught wind of a rumor that there some dangerous medical waste was among the trash on the boat, and they decided to reject its landing. The Mobro continued down the coast in search of a place it could unload it waste, eventually being denied access to both Mexico and Belize, as well. Finally, out of options, the barge returned to New York, and, after a pithy legal battle, the trash was incinerated. A bit of a media circus followed the long story of the Mobro, and Americans were somewhat fooled into thinking the country was short of landfill space (it wasn't really then, although it somewhat is now). This fear led Americans to become more interested in recycling and other environmentally safe programs.
Just two years after the Mobro fiasco, another event caused a recycling revival. A city in California called Berkeley banned the use of Polystyrene for the packaging of McDonald's sandwiches. This caused an uproar among the leaders at Dow Chemical, the world's leading Polystyrene manufacturer. These leaders decided to initiate major efforts to prove that plastics were recyclable. Just ten years later, nearly 1700 companies in the United States were involved in recycling plastics. It would be an understatement to say that the Berkeley officials' decision was instrumental in the discovery of the recyclability of post consumer plastics.
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