Recycling

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by Emily Graham0 views·Updated Nov 24, 2020
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  1. Hi, everyone.
  2. My name is Emily Graham, and today we're going to
  3. discuss recycling.
  4. Okay, so before we discuss the need to recycle, we
  5. need to address the current issues concerning our trash and
  6. recycling system.
  7. Nothing is ever truly thrown away because trash just sits
  8. in landfills, hardly decomposing in releasing toxins into the atmosphere.
  9. Additionally, trash won't truly go away unless it's got radioactive
  10. elements. Not only do many people put recyclable items in
  11. the trash, but recycled items are often put in the
  12. wrong bins or contaminated by not having been rinsed out
  13. because food could contaminate otherwise perfectly recyclable objects.
  14. Additionally, many items collected, such as plastic straws, eating utensils,
  15. yogurt cups and take out containers cannot actually be recycled.
  16. Let's talk about landfills.
  17. So in landfills, there isn't enough air in water to
  18. help bacteria decompose the waste.
  19. So the decaying process is very slow.
  20. There is some newspapers from the 19 fifties in landfills
  21. that can still be read today because they have not
  22. yet decayed due to all of the waste on top
  23. of them.
  24. So what makes up a landfill?
  25. Ah, lot of stuff in landfills are actually recyclable paper,
  26. plastics, metals glass and wood.
  27. Most of those items can actually be recycled, but they
  28. end up in a landfill because they're either contaminated when
  29. they attempted to be recycled or people just throw recyclable
  30. items in the trash.
  31. In addition, food waste can be composted still, why isn't
  32. recycling working in the US?
  33. Well, we used to ship most of our waste to
  34. China. But in 2018, China's National Sword Policy banned the
  35. import of most plastics and other materials that are not
  36. up to new, more stringent purity standards.
  37. So because of the U.
  38. S. Had always shift its recycling elsewhere.
  39. We never installed in infrastructure or plan for what to
  40. do with our own recycling in our country.
  41. So most of our waste end up going in landfills
  42. or in the ocean.
  43. By not having an effective recycling system in place, we're
  44. creating numerous large landfills, which releases carbon dioxide, methane, volatile
  45. organic compounds and other hazardous pollutants into the air, not
  46. to mention the plastic polluting our oceans.
  47. Wildlife are dying due to getting trapped in next or
  48. other plastics is, well, it's suffocating or starving because of
  49. stomach blockage from ingesting plastics.
  50. So what's the solution The best solution is to recycle,
  51. recycle, recycle, recycle.
  52. Another, less popular option is shipping waste to more rural
  53. areas. Now I live in a rural town, and this
  54. was attempted in my town so I can tell you
  55. it is not popular among locals.
  56. Essentially, the government wants to move waste from New York
  57. City or sludge, as we called it to a part
  58. of my town, and people protested around town Hall and
  59. signed petitions and even got on the news until the
  60. plan was eventually canceled.
  61. Now, what are some advantages?
  62. Advantages to recycling?
  63. It takes a lot of energy to manually process and
  64. break down materials.
  65. If we recycle instead of throwing so much away, we
  66. can save energy and cut down on carbon emissions.
  67. As Renee Chou describes, it also makes a lot of
  68. economic sense to set up an established recycling system in
  69. the United States.
  70. So what are some examples of recycling?
  71. One is to make recycled paper or recycled paper products.
  72. Now, if you want to make your own paper at
  73. home, you can, and there's a lot of tutorials online,
  74. and it's actually a pretty fun process.
  75. In this slide, I included a description of how lots
  76. of companies generally recycle their paper to make new products.
  77. So many straws and greeting cards that you can find
  78. in stores like Hallmark are now made of recycled paper.
  79. So how can you help?
  80. Everyone does a bit of recycling or conserving energy every
  81. day, but we can all improve toe, help our environment,
  82. many cans and bottles of a five cent return incentive
  83. for people to recycle.
  84. But beyond that, we can eliminate the use of single
  85. use items such as plastic straws and grocery bags and
  86. compost our plant food waste.