Is recycling worth it? Living in the Bay Area, there is a larger emphasis on “going green” than many other parts of the United States or even the world.  My family tries to do our part by sorting our trash in order to minimize what reaches the landfill. But, does recycling really help the environment? The answer is YES! Recycling is better for the environment and our communities than waste removal in many ways. A common misconception is that recycling requires more energy than waste removal due to the effort it takes to sort, process, and remanufacture these materials. The truth is that in most cases it is cheaper for the community to recycle. On average it takes about HALF the energy to recycle a product than to produce it from raw materials. More specifically, when dealing with an aluminum cans, it takes 95 percent less energy to use recycled aluminum, and it saves around 14,000 kilowatt hours of energy and approximately 40 barrels of oil per ton of aluminum. Recycling is a very easy way for an individual to have a positive impact on the environment, and it requiring a  very small amount of effort on our part. It is common sense to manage our resources properly as a global community.

Sources: http://www.byui.edu/university-operatio … ling-myths

Yes! I 100% agree!! Recycling is better and when you recycle they reuse the materials. People really need to pay attention to that

Recycling is definitely much better than simply sending everything to the landfill. The problem in America is that many people don't know how much they can recycle. We can recycle more than 80% of what we throw away and many people unaware of this aren't recycling enough. We need to make sure that all of this knowledge about recycling is widespread!

Yes we do. We just have to help people realize it

Yes recycling can really make a change to the US and make North America cleaner, but other countries are not capable of recycling and just trows there plastics and everything else on the ground and fall in oceans and spreads. You have probably seen the commercials about the bottles and how many times they are capable to go around the world. This is just in water bottles and think if we put everything that we don't recycle. That would just be awful and sad. The places that you are able to drop off cans and water bottles off are a big help because the persuade people to keep there bottles and and then revive money

Recycling is worth it even though its large scale impact might not be widely seen. When we recycle rubber bags at home or water bottles, not only are we saving ourselves some money, we are also saving the environment from pollution. When I started recycling bit by bit, I just thought to myself that I am among few in my area that carry out this practice, so what good can it do to the world. Although, I do believe in tiny contributions making a great impact and also being able to influence others around you to take up the initiative to recycle. Overtime, more than half of the world would be recycling and we would see the large scale impact recycling has.

Yes I agree