ECO-SAFE Tips
We have the power to help the environment in ways our future generations will be thankful for.Look for websites with the Eco-Safe Merit Badge. The web is becoming much more friendly to the environment and the Merit Badge gives us printing alternatives.
So why should we conserve paper?
American's throw away 85% of office paper, which means out of everything you print, more than 4 out of 5 pages, will go right into the trash. By not printing things that you will eventually throw away, you simply save trees. Each year the average American uses 2 trees worth of paper products (one tree makes roughly 8,400 sheets of copy paper). So if you were to only use copy paper and no other paper products, out of the 16,800 sheets of paper that you print on, you will throw away 13,440 of them. When you multiply that by the number of internet users worldwide the numbers are absolutely staggering.If you need to print something, try to purchase recycled paper instead!
Recycling paper and purchasing paper that has a high percentage of post consumer recycled material is a great way to prevent the environmental impact that comes along with throwing paper away.
There are three main reasons why you should recycle and use recycled paper:
- Environmental Impact
- Energy Conservation
- Conservation of precious resources and landfill space
According to the EPA, recycling paper causes a 35% reduction in water pollution and a 74% reduction in air pollution. When paper is disposed of into a landfill, the decomposing paper produces methane a potent greenhouse gas. Even when paper is incinerated and not disposed of into a landfill, the burning of paper emits volatile organic compounds that pollute our air.
The EIA (Environmental Information Administration) puts the amount of energy conserved by paper containing recycled fibers at 40%. Recycled paper performs just as well as virgin paper, with so many companies creating recycled paper for everyday use, including copy paper. The United States government printing office has approved a list of copy paper that is a certified 30% recycled paper or higher http://www.gpo.gov/qualitycontrol/cpypaper.htm.
Don't just recycle paper, recycle anything that you can!
Paper isn't the only thing that you can recycle; cans, bottles, eWaste, etc. are all things that can be recycled. If they are simple thrown away into landfills, these things can have adverse affects on the environment.Newspapers- Yes, it is a type of paper, but it contributes largely to the growing waste problem. Each day Americans throw away 44 million sheets of newspaper. That is equivalent to 500,000 trees each week!
Tin/Steel- Recycling a single can 95% of the energy used to make it from scratch. Which means that it is possible to create 20 cans out of recycled material for the same amount of energy needed to make one can from new material?
Aluminum- Last year 36 billion aluminum cans were thrown away and ended up in landfills. The scrap value of all of those cans is more than 600 million dollars. By recycling one aluminum can, enough energy is conserved to run a television for three hours. But what happens to 36 billion cans that ended up in our landfills? Well, we could scrap them for another 100 years because that is how long it takes for aluminum to biodegrade.
Glass- Glass is an amazing material; it does not have a limit on how many times it can be recycled, meaning it never wears out. At the moment, most bottles and jars contain at least 25% recycled glass. It is important to recycle glass because it takes about 1 million years to biodegrade. The human race has only been found to exist since 200,000 years ago.
Plastic- Plastic never biodegrades, it is around forever. If every American recycled just 1 out of every 10 bottles that they used, it would keep 200 million pounds of plastic out of our landfills each year.
Styrofoam- Contrary to what producers would like you to think, YOU CANNOT RECYCLE IT! It never biodegrades either, just like plastic, but unlike plastic you cannot recycle it. Each year Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam cups each year. That means after 10 years there will be 250,000,000,000 cups in our landfills and after 100 years there will be 2,500,000,000,000 cups in our landfills. All of which will never biodegrade. And these numbers are just in America.
eWaste- Many electronic materials have harmful materials like lead that if not disposed of properly, can lead to contamination of landfills or water supply. Some states have environmental laws that prevent local trash companies from picking up old tv's, computer monitors or other eWaste. Over 4 million computer disks are thrown away each day, with a degrading time of over 500 years. That is 500,000,000 disks in landfills each year. eWaste is a growing problem because of the constant updating of technology. Usually most eWaste is disposed of before it stops working!
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