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Why should people recycle?
Mariane Blouin-Gascon, Montréal, Quebec

Recycling steel, plastic, and aluminum. Photo: M. Blondin
Recycling steel, plastic, and aluminum. Photo: M. Blondin

Most of our garbage is sent to landfills, dumps or municipal incinerators. But with more and more people producing more and more waste, landfills are filling up faster than we can find new sites for them. And landfills create new types of waste. As garbage decomposes, moisture filters through it producing a toxic liquid known as leachate. Modern landfills are designed to reduce the amount of moisture that reaches the garbage, and many have a system to collect and treat the leachate.

Decomposing garbage also produces two greenhouses gases: carbon dioxide and methane, an invisible, odourless, and highly flammable gas. Landfill sites account for about 38 per cent of Canada's total methane emissions. Methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas that carbon dioxide. At some big landfill sites in Canada, methane is now being collected and burned to produce energy.

Water and oxygen are required to break down garbage. But water and oxygen are in short supply deep in a landfill, so decomposition takes place very slowly. In fact, when researchers cored down into a landfill in the United States, they discovered newspapers over 30 years old still in readable condition!

Incinerators are sometimes used to burn solid waste under controlled conditions. They reduce the stress on landfills, but they create other environmental problems. The ashes must be disposed of, either at a landfill, or, if they are toxic, at a hazardous waste facility. Burning garbage also produces acid gases, carbon dioxide and toxic chemicals that must be treated with expensive air pollution control equipment to avoid contributing to acid rain, ozone depletion and air pollution.

Recycling is just one way to reduce wastes. To be really effective, we have to incorporate the 4Rs Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover into our daily routine. Reducing the amount of waste we produce is by far the most effective way to battle the flow of garbage into the landfill. Packaging makes up about half our garbage by volume, one-third by weight.

There are many things you can do to reduce the amount of waste you produce.

  • Avoid food packaged in individual servings. Buy in bulk. It saves money and the environment.
  • Buy multi-use items rather than single-use when possible.
  • Use your own cloth bags for shopping.
  • Donate your old clothes to charity.
  • Buy beverages in refillable containers.
  • Use rechargeable batteries.
  • Share your newspaper, magazines and books with a friend.
  • Wrap presents in reusable cloth bags or reused wrapping paper.
  • Rent items you use infrequently.
  • Compost your kitchen scraps and yard waste.
  • Pack your lunch in reusable containers.
  • Support your community's recycling programs.
  • Buy products that contain recycled materials.
  • Use both sides of every sheet of paper.
  • Use a durable refillable mug or glass at school or work.
  • Encourage your friends and family to follow your good example.
  • Buy what you recycle. Recycling doesn't end with collecting our recyclables. To "close the loop" we need to turn those materials into new usable products, and to ensure a market for those products.

Be creative. There are many more ways we can reduce the waste we produce.

Follow the links below for more information on recycling:

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