Why Recycle?

When we throw cans and bottles away, we are losing the energy and raw materials that were used to manufacture them, and we are also filling up landfill sites. If we keep on throwing away natural resources, eventually they will run out, and we are running out of landfill space too.

So it is more important than ever that we use fewer resources and ensure everything we do doesn’t have a negative impact on the environment. If we all live greener, it makes the best use of our resources so that we can preserve them for future generations. Recycling is one easy way in which we can all contribute to sustainability.

Recycling our cans and bottles when we are out and about makes sense because it:

• Saves natural resources

• Saves energy

• Reduces greenhouse gas emissions

• Reduces waste

• Reduces the need for landfill

We may think that we are recycling more now than ever before, but in the UK a number of the four billion packs we sell every year are consumed outside the home, and so do not get recycled through local authority kerbside collections. So there is definitely more that can be done and Recycle Zone is a step in the right direction.

So, every drink can or bottle we put in a Recycle Zone bin makes a positive contribution to reducing our own environmental impact. It’s a no brainer – we really need to get into the recycling habit as part of our everyday lives!

Want to know more? Here is the techy bit about why we need to recycle.

Aluminium and steel are really good examples. These metals don’t occur naturally in the earth’s crust - they have to be extracted from rocks. In the case of aluminum, for example, this ore is called bauxite, and with steel it is iron ore. To extract aluminium from the ore uses a great deal of energy in a process called electrolysis that takes place at a smelting plant. The energy used for smelting has to be produced from other sources and the smelting process can produce harmful gasses.

Recycling and melting down old metal cans uses much less energy, and produces far fewer emissions, as well as saving these precious natural resources.

So the big benefit of metal cans is that they can be reprocessed again and again, and it is impossible to tell the difference. We just need to recycle more of the metal, and putting your drink cans in a Recycle Zone bin is a way that you can do just that.

Plastic is one of the most popular and useful materials of modern times, but this is also part of the problem: we now use about 20 times more plastic than we did 50 years ago – and that is a mind boggling amount of plastic. By recycling more plastic bottles into new ones, we can reduce our need to create ‘new’ plastic. This means conserving oil, which is a non-renewable fossil fuel, as well as reducing energy usage and the amount of waste going to landfill.

The production and use of glass also has a number of environmental impacts. New glass is made from three main ingredients: Sand, Soda ash, and Limestone. All these materials have to be quarried, which can damage the landscape, affect the environment and use more energy. Glass is 100% recyclable and can be endlessly reprocessed with no loss of quality.  Therefore by simply recycling our glass we can: conserve non-renewable fossil fuels, reduce the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and reduce the consumption of energy.

So, if we all recycle when out and about wherever possible, we can help ‘close the loop' and really make a difference.