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Paul Miller
Professor John
English 104
1 November 2014
How to Save the World
One of the most controversial topics in todays society is about recycling and
what we can do to help keep our earth clean for many years to come. Recycling is defined
by Merriam-Webster dictionary as to make something new out of something that has
been used before. Recycling is one of the best ways to reduce the amount of waste and
pollution that we as humans have been creating to make our lives better. There have also
been many campaigns to get people to start recycling such as the Reduce, Reuse, and
Recycle campaign and the Go Green campaign. Clearly, protecting the environment
and saving our earth from pollution is a popular topic, and the best way to go about doing
this is through recycling, however, there are still many barriers around the world and
even on Ball States campus that prevent recycling from achieving the success that it
could. Ball State needs to create better opportunities for recycling on campus so we can
hinder the negative effects that pollution and lack of recycling are causing on the
environment. These effects include destroying wildlife habitats, damaging rivers and their
ecosystems, and clogging of dams and other waterways because of improper disposal of
trash.
The first thing that needs to be done so that we can start to promote recycling and
hinder the effects of pollution on the environment, is to inform the populace about how to
recycle, what can and can not be recycled, and where to recycle these items. I conducted

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a field research survey on campus, and found that 75% of the 20 participants said that
they used the recycling on campus often. Of the 20 people surveyed, 85% said that they
thought they knew what things can and can not be recycled, but when asked if they knew
that abnormal things such as dirty diapers, mattresses, chewing gum, tennis balls, and
even dead pets could be recycled at specific places around the world, only 15% said that
they knew some of these things could be recycled. Going from 85% of people thinking
that they know what can and cant be recycled to only 15% of those people knowing
about some of the exotic things that can be recycled is a huge difference. It proves that
although many people think that they know about the potential of recycling, not everyone
actually knows what can and cant be recycled.
Educated the populace about recycling has been known to increase the amount of
recycling that actually happens within a country. A study conducted in Spain showed that
when they sent out several different types of SMS messages to children that provided
their cell phone numbers to them, there was a 33% increase in the amount of kids that
knew what all could be recycled in the yellow bins that Spain has (Buil, RogerLoppacher, Marimon 11). The SMS messages also increased the percentage of kids that
knew Spains recycling bins were yellow. Although the study later deduced that SMS
messaging wasnt the best way to get kids to learn more about recycling, it was proven to
still be effective in teaching kids where and how to recycle. One of the easiest and most
popular ways to educate kids on how to recycle is by having a day where people that
work in the profession come into schools to teach about recycling. Personally, my school
did this about once a year during elementary school, but never had any programs about

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recycling in high school, when the information could have been more easily retained and
talked about more in depth.
What exactly do we need to inform the populace about pertaining to recycling?
After informing them about how and where to recycle, we need them to know why they
should recycle. One of the biggest reasons that we need to recycle is to reduce the amount
of pollution that we are causing during the production of energy and other new materials.
One of the leading polluters in the energy industry is that of oil refineries. Oil is one of
resource that is growing daily in its use and capabilities. Although there are some
alternatives to oil, it has been found that oil is still the best to use although it can be
detrimental to the environment at times. There are, however, best available techniques
that can be used to help oil refineries reduce the amount of pollution they are causing on
the environment. In fact, when refineries are deciding what techniques to use, they need
to consider the features of their specific refinery such as the following: geographic
location, the nature of the feedstock and final products, and the presence of other oil
refineries or other industries in the area (Martnez and Rodrguez 11). The article
describes in detail that no best available techniques should be overlooked no matter how
simple or complex that they may be.
The reason we need these refineries and factories to control their amount of waste
and to start recycling more is because if we do not, it will damage ecosystems in nearby
waterways and destroy the habitats of wildlife that may be endangered. Due to laws
regarding environmental protection, factory pollution can cause a need to restore
waterways that can be very costly to tax payers. According to an article by Ashley
Moerke and Gary Lamberti, stream restoration in the state of Indiana can cost anywhere

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from $50,000 to $350,000 depending on the company that is hired to restore the stream as
well as the damage that has been done to the stream and what techniques will be required
to restore it (Moerke and Lamberti 5-6). Even at this high of a cost, stream ecosystems
cannot be restored to their former glory through this process. The article also details the
extensive process that must be undertaken to correctly restore the streams to their former
glory and how to better conserve the wildlife habitats of the various animals that live
there. It states, Stream restorations need to shift from restoration of structure, such as
artificial fish cover, to restoration of function, such as nutrient cycling, detritus
processing, and natural sediment routing (Moerke and Lamberti 7). What this means is
that instead of fixing the ecosystem so that it will be able to thrive for a short period of
time before it will need to be restored again, the people that work on the restoration need
to fix the building blocks of the habitat that will allow it to thrive on without further
altercations. To do this, it would be even more costly and time consuming, which is why
most streams do not get fixed fully, and rather just get temporary fixes. Because of the
extensiveness we would have to go to restore streams, it would be better if we just
stopped the pollution of streams altogether, the best of which would be by recycling.
One form of recycling is to create a sustainable area that uses the resources
needed, but still does not do any harm to the ecosystems surrounding them. One of the
ways worldwide that is promoting sustainability is in New South Wales, Australia in the
Sydney area. Robert J. Evans describes the way it is happening in his article titles
Sustainable Supply. The article states:
The significant droughts that affected the Australian state of New South Wales in
2006 and 2007 led the state government to develop a multipronged approach to

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ensuring reliable drinking water supply for the Sydney region. The key element of
the approach is a significant reverse-osmosis seawater desalination facility that
was designed and constructed in ways that minimized the projects effect on the
surrounding ecosystems. (Evans 1)
Not only is the city of Sydney and the surrounding areas creating a sustainable way to get
clean drinking water to their citizens in a cheap way, they are also preserving the amount
of water in the area to reduce the amount that drought plays in the supply, and they are
also conserving the ecosystems and habitats of nearby creatures that also rely upon the
area water. The system will allow Sydney and the surrounding areas to have drinkable
water independent of rainfall amounts so that drought will not threaten the populations
water supply.
There are many different ways we can recycle to create a sustainable earth.
Everyone knows that you can recycle plastics and paper to be remade into new paper or
plastic materials, but most do not know that almost everything you use can be recycled.
Food can be converted into basic components such as fats and starches among other
things that can then be used in products such as lip balms. Even materials that arent
exactly thought of to be recyclable can be burned for energy. Sweden, the leading country
in recycling, recycles over 90% of their waste, and has made a business of recycling by
importing other countrys waste to burn and use as a new source of energy, while at the
same times charging countries to take away their waste. Sustainable practices like these,
along with recycling, is a great way to preserve our natural resources and at the same
time conserve our waterways and the habitats of various animal species.

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In Sweden, waste management is becoming a profitable business, however, how
do other countries stack up in the cost of reducing waste? France, one of the countries
that exports waste to Sweden, is starting to develop sustainable recycling patterns of their
own. Often overlooked when describing the cost of recycling is the opportunity cost of
putting waste into a landfill instead of making a system that can reuse the products. When
taken in to account, it was found that Frances recycling systems were sustainable and
helpful in terms of reducing the costs on society, however, when opportunity cost was not
taken into account, it was found that recycling was more costly than any profits that it
brought (Cabral, Ferreira, Simes, Ferreira da Cruz, and Marques 9-10). The article helps
to understand that although the operation and building of recycling plants can be costly, it
is more costly to throw away recyclable materials and have to put them in landfills
instead. Opponents to recycling will often state that it is costly to build and maintain
places for recycling, but they will rarely discuss the alternatives of having to instead
displace waste into landfills.
Even though the building of new recycling plants can be costly, with new
technology to separate different types of recyclables, the price of recycling is going
down. One of the ways that the cost of recycling is being decreased is through the
development and use of image processing in recycling plants. This technology uses a
combination of spectral imaging and digital imaging. According to Williamson and
Leitner, spectral imaging is used for sorting paper, cardboard, and plastics while digital
imaging is used to go beyond dirt or ink to still detect what type of recyclable it is
(Leitner and Williamson 1-2). This will allow these machines to sort roughly up to 50,000
tons of waster per year. Depending on the length and width of the conveyer belt, each

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system can sort up to 10 tons per hour. The system increases the output from older
methods by a large amount and its cost is relatively inexpensive compared to the increase
it receives in production possibility. With scientists working daily to find new ways to
make recycling more cost efficient while still keeping it green and effective, recycling
costs are sure to continue to go downward in the years to come.
Another major argument for recycling being too costly is the problem of
allocating recycling depots in a way to get as many people as possible to recycle and to
have it be as convenient as possible for them. In a study that modeled different ways to
allocate recycling depots, it was determined that the three main factors into positioning
were service distance, district equity, and service ratio (Jehng-Jung, Yung-Tai, You-Ti 3).
Service distance was defined as simply the distance between each household and its
nearest recycling depot, district equity is having more depots in heavily populated areas,
and service ratio is the total percentage of households within a certain distance of a
recycling depot. The study found a way to allocate the recycling depots in a way that 15
depots would be just as productive if not more productive as 16 allocated in a different
order would. This article helps us to understand that quantity isnt always the most
important thing when placing recycling depots. It proves that if you place them wisely,
you can cover a vast area of people and promote recycling in the region because of them
being closer to more citizens.
Although making recycling cheaper for the masses of people is a good thing, we
must also be careful that making it cheaper does not also make it more dangerous and
detrimental to society. Informal recycling of electronics is one of the ways that recycling
can actually be harmful to the environment. Informal recycling process scrap electronics

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to get usable materials. The ways with which they go about doing this, however, can be
harmful to the environment. To extract gold from circuit boards, they use a
hydrometallurgical process with acids and cyanides that later get dumped into local water
systems (Williams, Kahhat, Bengtsson, Hayashi, Hotta, and Totoki 1). Another harmful
way of recycling is using open burning to extract insulation from copper wires, which
emits harmful pollutants into the air. Because of these harmful ways of recycling,
governments have had to implement policies that regulate recycling and make sure that it
is being done right, which can sometimes deter people from recycling altogether.
Although government regulations and policies will again increase the cost of recycling,
the main goal (helping to clean the environment and create sustainable ecosystems) is
still being upheld with the implementation of these new government policies regarding
recycling.
In comparison to the European Union, the United States is more interested in the
economic side of recycling rather than the environmental side of recycling. Renewable
electricity is one major example of that. In his article, Knudsen states, All six New
England states have undertaken renewable energy policies linked to climate change,
although these concerns do not represent the reason for switching to renewable energy
(Knudsen 15). The European Union has several policies in place that require member
nations to have an energy strategy that is least harmful to the climate, and renewable
energy is a key priority in these requirements. While on the US side, according to the
article, concerns for security of supply retain stronger leverage than environmental
concerns, even with the increased political discussion of global warming. While regional
governments are pushing for renewable energy, albeit mainly for economic reasons, the

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federal government is holding back the development of more efficient ways to utilize
renewable energy. The article finished by stating the importance of more interdependence
between regional and national governments so that more states can adopt renewable
energy if they so choose to. This difference in levels of governments has hindered the
potential for recycling and using renewable resources for energy to take off.
Going along with the restrictions that are placed on local governments by the
national government, an article written by Urpelainen discusses the variance between
what national governments impose and what local governments really want. One of the
main points he made is that because of national regulations, local governments cannot
always do what would be best for their specific areas that they govern. Specifically, local
governments contain an informational advantage on local political benefits that recycling
policies could have (Urpelainen 19). However, the national government instead relies
upon inaccurate data that they have collected for a broad area to make their rules and
regulations, which make local governments incapable of making policies that best, fit
their specific small area. The difference between local and national government policies
often causes recycling to be hindered from becoming as great as it could.
Local governments have been lobbying for recycling and environmental concern,
but what do people actually believe about recycling? A study done by Best and Mayerl
surveyed roughly 1,300 Germans to help decide how many of them participated in
household waste recycling, and what their beliefs about recycling were. In this study, they
found that attitudes towards a healthy environment had direct effects on the behaviors of
people to do low effort things such as recycle, but did not have a direct effect on their
cognitions to actually go out and volunteer to help clean up the environment themselves

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(Best and Mayerl 1). Basically, this means that although people think that the
environment should be cleaned, that does not necessarily cause them to want to clean the
environment themselves.
Have the average college students actions and thoughts about recycling changed
since the mid 1990s? A survey showed that in 1995, when recycling services were
provided, 70% said that they would use the service (Larsen 1). From my independent
survey, I found that 75% of students said that they use the recycling on campus. Although
it is small, this is still an improvement. From Larsens survey, it was determined that 25%
thought enough was being done to clean the environment and 24% thought the worlds
oceans were not in need of being cleaned, but from my survey, I found only 10% thought
enough was being done to clean the environment, and a meager 5% thought waterways
needed to be cleaned more. Both of these categories showed over 15% drops in
confidence of a pollution free planet. In the 1995 survey, 33% of people said they would
volunteer to help clean up the environment if asked, where as now, only 25% said they
would volunteer to help clean the environment. This statistic being so much lower than
the amount of people that actually recycle and the amount that believe we need to clean
the planet fully supports Best and Mayerls argument that beliefs in recycling do not
mean that people will be willing to go out and volunteer to help clean up the
environments.
What can a single university like Ball State do to help this cause? First of all, they
can put more recycling bins on campus. My survey found that 60% of students that had
recyclables and were looking for a recycling bin to put them in, could not find one within
a close distance, but could find a trash can, and instead put the recyclables in the trash to

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later be put in a landfill. Likewise, 30% of students said that they could not find a
trashcan nearby, and instead threw their trash into a recycling bin, which would later have
to be siphoned out at a recycling plant. Even the simplest of actions, such as making sure
there is a recycling bin by every trashcan and vice versa can help promote recycling. One
of the clubs I am a member of was using cardboard for an event at the Sursa Hall parking
garage, and once we were done with it we planned on taking it to a recycling dumpster,
however, we walked all the way to Woodworth passing three garbage areas and could not
find one recycling dumpster big enough to hold all of the cardboard boxes that we had,
and ended up throwing it all away. A combination of not knowing where to take them,
and not finding any nearby recycling dumpsters led to them being deposited into waste
dumpsters.
Even simple things like putting recycling bins next to trashcans or going out and
volunteering to clean up the environment does a great deal to help with the efforts of
recycling to protect our earth. Every person that goes out to help can make a huge
difference. If we all recycle everything that we can as a society, we can ultimately reduce
prices of goods and services and create a sustainable earth that will be around for many
more years to come. Go out and do your part by recycling!

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Works Cited
Bengtsson, Magnus, Shiko Hayashi, Yasuhiko Hotta, Ramzy Kahhat,
Yoshiaki Totoki, and Eric Williams. Linking Informal and Formal
Electronics Recycling via an Interface Organization. Challenges
4.2 (Sept. 2013) Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.
Best, Henning and Jochen Mayerl. Values, Beliefs, Attitudes: An
Empirical Study on the Structure of Environmental Concern and
Recycling Participation Values, Beliefs, Attitudes: An Empirical
Study on the Structure of Environmental Concern and Recycling
Participation. Social Science Quarterly 94.3 (Sept. 2013)
Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.
Buil, Pilar, Frederic Marimon, and Olga Roger-Loppacher. "The Impact of
SMS Messages on Young People's Participation in Recycling
Campaigns." Comunicacin y Sociedad 27.1 (2014) : 161-182.
Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.
Cabral, Marta, Rui Cunha Marques, Sandra Ferreira, Nuno Ferreira da
Cruz, and Pedro Simes. Financial Flows in the Recycling of
Packaging Waste: The Case of France. Polish Journal of
Environmental Studies 22.6 (2013) : 1637-1647. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2014.
Evans, Robert J. Sustainable Supply. Civil Engineering 81.7 (July
2011) : 50-57 Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2014.

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Huang, You-Ti, Jahng-Jung Kao, and Young-Tai Tsai. Spatial Service
Location-Allocation Analysis for Siting Recycling Depots. Journal
of Environmental Engineering 139.8 (Aug. 2013) : 1035-1041.
Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2014.
Knudsen, Jrgen K. Integration of Environmental Concerns in a Trans
Atlantic Perspective: The Case of Renewable Electricity. Review
of Policy Research 27.2 (Mar. 2010) Academic Search Premier.
Web. 27 Sept. 2014.
Lamberti, Gary A. and Ashley H. Moerke. Restoring Stream
Ecosystems: Lessons from a Midwestern State. Restoration
Ecology 12.3 (Sept. 2004) : 327-334 Academic Search Premier.
Web. 27 Sept. 2014.
Larsen, Knud S. Environmental Waste: Recycling Attitudes and
Correlates. Journal of Social Psychology 135.1 (Feb. 1995)
Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.
Leitner, Raimund and Mark Williamson. A Clean Image [Image
Processing Used in Recycling Plants]. Engineering and
Technology 3.2 (9 Feb. 2008) Academic Search Premier. Web. 27
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Martnez, Jose-Luis and Encarnacin Rodrguez. Pollution Prevention
and Control Procedure Case Study: An Application for Petroleum
Refineries. Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association
(Jun. 2005) Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.

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Urpelainen, Johannes. Explaining the Schwarzenegger Phenomenon:
Local Frontrunners in Climate Policy. Global Environmental
Politics 9.3 (Aug. 2009) Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Sept.
2014.