Recycling

It saves money. For most folks, recycling is free and/or cheaper than hauling away landfill garbage. Many communities either have or are running out of landfill space. Once the existing landfill space is used up, either a new landfill must be built (typically expensive and payed for through increased taxes), or the garbage must be hauled off to a different area to be dumped (expensive and payed for through increased garbage rates). And, ev en so there will come a time that there will be no nice alternatives.

Recycling has the potential for reducing the use of raw resources which we are running out of and/or are too expensive to mine. This is what is fueling metal recycling. It can also prevent us from threatening to run out of resources that we are using at an unsustainable rate. And, it can help prevent the convertion of land, and the habitats that stand on that land, into wood or argriculture production.

Recycling also has the potential to capture, fully use, or re-use substances that would be potential contaminates within a landfill. Batteries, mercury filled thermometers, CFL light bulbs, electronics, refridgerators, automobile fluids, many scales and pieces of medical equipment with small bits of internal radio actvity, chemicals used and generated in manufacturing, and so many other things are examples.

For many individuals, companies, and communities re-using, re-purposing, and re-manufacturing materials on-site or within the region results in savings and/or products that return value to and/or within the community.