Bryan Howe English September 8, 2013 UALR Is throwing that used Coke can in the trash an unforgivable sin?

That really comes down to who you ask. When it comes to the great recycling debate you will find plenty of people on either side with convincing arguments. The main issue with these two sides is that the people giving the arguments are usually misinformed, over simplified and simply untrue. Yet doubts remain. Many critics question if recycling is just a way to make people feel good about themselves, rather than save the environment. Back in the 1987, the Mobro 4000 (also known as the Gar-Barge) was made famous by carrying trash along the East coast of the US from New York to Belize until a disposal mechanism was made to dispose of the garbage. This particular moment in history really became the basis of advocates and their argument that we have to recycle because landfill space is becoming extremely limited. Like most advocates though, this statement was a bit misleading. When it comes to the question on whether we need to recycle because we are running out of space, the answer is no. The planet Earth has practically as much space to dump waste as we want. Ignoring the fact that the earth is big enough to dump as much waste as we want, and focusing on landfills alone, then yes we are running out of space. The National Solid Wastes Management Association has determined that the United States has roughly 20 years of storage left. The Northeast region of the United States and Alaska are great examples of places that are even closer to running out of space. Places like: North Carolina, Delaware, New Hampshire,

Connecticut, and Rhode Island. These places are overflowing so much that they are encouraging recycling to be able to keep their landfill space and stay in business. One way they are doing this is by increasing their tipping fee. A tipping fee is a cost on a given amount of garbage brought into a waste management facility. The average tipping fee in the United States is roughly 34 dollars a ton. In the Northeast and Alaska however, a tipping fee is over 70 dollars a ton. Many people also believe that recycling is actually bad for the environment in some ways. Contamination is one of the biggest problems in the recycling world. If there are toxins on a piece of material that has been recycled. For example, the paint on a spray can, then most of the time that material will make it through the recycling plant and get combined with a brand new product like a Coke can. The scariest thing about this is that we dont know when an item has been contaminated until something bad happens and its too late. The citizens in the city of Taiwan are experiencing gamma radiation poisoning that has been going on for the past 12 years due to building being made form recycled steel. On top of this, there is also the concern for air pollution. The actual process of recycling already causes a lot of pollution in itself. Containing hundreds of air born toxins each, garbage and recycling trucks add to the amount of air pollutants. The sad fact is that recycling trucks admit just as much fossil fuels into the air as the ones that pick up trash. No matter what the purpose, they both cause harm. Another way that recycling is hurting the environment is by the way it deals with paper products. Paper is recycled into what is known as pulp. This pulp is cleaned, washed, dried and pressed into new sheets of paper. During this recycling process, wastes such as chemicals, inks, dyes, and paper fibers are expelled into what is known as paper sludge. This sludge is then taken to a landfill, where it can infiltrate ground water with toxic chemicals. Plastics are

also a big concern when it comes to recycling. You know that plastic water bottle you throw in the recycling? Well turns out that it is probably going in the trash. Before you throw that plastic water bottle in the bin, you need to know whether or not the recycling company will take that certain type of plastic. Today in the world, there are about 7 different kinds of plastic that you will encounter, and only two kinds can be processed and recycled. Out of those 7, the other 5 types of plastics will go through the recycling process, sorted, filtered out and end up in your neighborhood landfill. Sometimes the recycling process doesnt do the best job either. Some plastics can even slip through the recycling process and end up in places that they arent supposed to which makes plastic one of the hardest materials to recycle. An example of one of these everyday products is shopping bags. Today in the United States, around 1 percent of these bags are put through the recycling process leaving 300,000 tons of them ending up in landfills each year. One of the reasons that the percentage is so low is due to the fact that it costs so much to have them processed. It costs on average four thousand dollars to recycle a single plastic bag. Another main issue with recycling is that it barely comes close to matching the demand of products. At the rate that demand for recyclable products is growing, it can never match the amount that it can provide. Aluminum is the most demanded recyclable product in the United States, and is the most difficult to produce, especially when the demand for it grows ten percent every year. This can sometimes be a problem. For example, recycled paint cans are not strong enough, or have the rught quality to make into parts for a car, plane or boat. Sometimes, its not even good enough to make for parts of a computer. That means that companies will still need to mine for new aluminum, which will then be recycled, and will still not be good enough to use for most things.

Ron Gonen who is the deputy commissioner of sanitation in the state of New York thinks otherwise when it comes to the topic of recycling. He says about 2/3 of New Yorks waste stream is actually recyclable and out of the 3 million tons that they generate every year,

Over 2 million of those tons could be moved from landfill intot he recycle industry. In a world where if we only recycle about half a million tons, we could be saving tens of millions of dollars in disposable fees. He says that every ton that they take to a landfill, they pay about 86 dollars a ton. When it comes to paper, they actually get paid to recycle. "It's very important for New Yorkers to understand that recycling is not just good for the environment, but it's equally good for their pocket books," says the deputy commissioner of recycling and sustainability. I personally believe that recycling is worth it to an extent, but not as much as people have made it out to be. I believe that we as human beings are consuming too many materials to compensate with the amount that we recycle. Also, I believe that we need to find more effective ways to recycle our goods than what we are already doing.