Anti Recycling Essay

674 Words3 Pages
Recycling is often regarded as a very environment friendly, go green type of activity. In recent years, several cities and towns through America have pushed residents to recycle more and more, and reduce their overall trash outtake. However, recycling is not as great as it it seems. Yes, it holds several environmental benefits, but also has several negative consequences, ranging from being costly and tedious work to the dangers associated with producing recycled products. Plastics are a commonly recycled product. Many items that we use, from electronics to cellophane wrap, are composed of plastic materials. This obviously makes it a material that seemingly would be best to recycle. However, recycling plastics are not as easy as it seems. Those plastic bottles that we use have very complex, very different compositions. As great as it would be to just grab a mass of plastics, melt them together, and create new containers, the way that each plastic is created will not allow that. Every plastic can only be recycled with it's own kind. The most common types of plastics are #1 and #2 (PETE and HDPE, respectively) and are considered the easiest to recycle. Unfortunately, this does not always mean that any plastic material with a #1 or #2 stamped on it will be recycled. According to Discover Magazine, additional chemicals are added to the basic plastics ranging from dyes to plasticizers, and makes it increasingly difficult to be sorted and recycled at facilities. Add to the mix plastics that are from yogurt containers and Chinese food, and you have a mess to try to sort out. This is part of the reason why “only about 6.8 percent of the total plastic used in the U.S.” are actually able to be recycled (Cernansky). Since so many people automatically assume that all plastic is easily and readily recyclable, they just throw it into the bin, not aware that it takes up valuable

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