BLOG IN YOUR FACE

I wanted to write a blog asking my readers out there to recycle and I thought I would look up a few facts to throw in there about it. After some research, I have found some absolutely MIND BLOWING information. Quite honestly it is scaring the piss out of me. Seriously, I am peeing down my leg right now…it’s not stopping…oh my goodness it’s in my shoe…dang, these are brand new socks…and I’m out of paper towels…

Anyway, it is a scary situation, but for every scary fact out there about garbage, there is also an amazing fact about the progress of recycling. One thing I did not realize is the amount of crude oil that we use to develop and transport new products and goods (“Virgin” products as they are sometimes referred to), when we could be using more recycled goods and dramatically reducing our dependence on foreign oil. The less demand for an item (such as oil) makes the price go down! So remember that the next time you get your butt chapped about the high price of gasoline. If we all were a little more green, not only would we help the planet out but there would be a lot of things that would not cost near as much.

Virtually everything these days is recyclable, with the exception of rotten food and Styrofoam. And with rotten food you can make a compost pile and you can reuse Styrofoam (or, as I prefer, never use it in the first place) countless times. The way I see it, there is not much need for producing garbage at all. Here is a sweet list I have compiled:

 Aluminum Cans

            -Scary: 36 billion cans were put into landfills last year. That’s worth 600 million dollars…thrown away. Experts predict that future generations will have to mine landfills because we will use up all of our natural ore resources.

            -Awesome: A recycled can saves 95 percent of the energy that making a virgin can from bauxite uses. That energy could run a T.V. for 3 hours. Almost 65 percent the 99 billion cans we use every year are getting recycled. We need to keep this up!!

Paper

            -Scary: 10 city blocks of rainforest are destroyed every single minute. That’s like mowing over an area the size of Pennsylvania every year.

            -Awesome: One tree can filter 60 pounds of pollution out of the air every year. Recycling one ton of paper can save not only 17 of those trees, but nearly 7000 gallons of good ‘ol water, almost 500 gallons of crude oil and 4000 Kilowatts of energy. That would reduce air pollution by 600 pounds a year. One American household could do all this if they just recycled their newspapers and junk mail every year.

Plastic and Styrofoam

            -Scary: We could shrink wrap Texas with the shrink wrap we use in a year. Plastic shopping bags kill 1 million sea animals a year. Plastic takes 400 years to break down; Styrofoam over 500.

            -Awesome: We can choose to use canvas shopping bags or get paper ones and recycle them. Most grocery stores have recycling bins for your old plastic bags. They melt ‘em down and make new ones at a fraction of the energy it takes to make ‘em. If America recycles its plastic bottles and containers, that would make for 2,190,000,000 less of them in our landfills every year.

Energy Usage

            Scary: Since 1950, we have consumed more energy than in the history of the Earth’s existence prior too. That is in the form of coal, crude oil and natural gas.

            Awesome: Currently we are recycling enough that the resulting energy conservation is enough to potentially power 9 million households a year. But we need to keep it up!!!

Glass

            Scary: To make one ton of glass it takes 1,330 pounds of sand, 430 pounds of soda ash, and 430 pounds of limestone and 150 pounds of feldspar (whatever the heck that is). At this rate we can kiss our sandy beaches goodbye. I guess I will honeymoon in the rainforest…er…wait…

            Awesome: Recycle one glass jar and you have conserved enough juice to power a 100 watt light bulb for four hours! Most glass these days is made up of about 35 percent recycled glass products (we could do better!). Glass never gets “worn out.” We can recycle it a million bagillion times. Every ton of glass recycled saved 9 gallons of fuel (oil).

If you live in an apartment that does not recycle, get a hold of your apartment manager and ask them to put recycling bins out and offer to take them to the curb once a week. You may even get 10 bucks or so taken off your rent a month if you ask. If you live in a house, call the city and get a recycling bin and get one for your neighbors on either side! If you don’t have a curbside recycling service, look around in your phonebook for city recycling centers. Jaci and I do not have curbside service but we take all of our recycling (and trust me, we have A LOT) about three miles to the recycling center and they have huge dumpster-looking bins that we can throw our stuff in there. We take turns taking it about once a week. If you have neighbors, maybe you could set up a rotating schedule for who gets to take recycling to the center.

Me peeing my pants is pretty funny. What is not so funny are the future of our landfills; the future of plant and animal habitats; the future of the environment and air quality; and the future of mankind.

Feel free to comment below. You may need to click on the article’s title (headline) in order to open up the comment field below. You may also e-mail me any thoughts you might have to ahubbard13@bloginyourface.com and if I like what you have to say I will post it alongside this blog. If I don’t like what you have to say I may also post it alongside this blog along with my personal comments on where you should shove it!