Can We Say NO To Recycling Essay -- science

Can We Say "NO" To Recycling Lately the earth’s capacity to tolerate exploitation and absorb solid wastes disposal has diminished, due to excess trashing. People dispose lots of stuff, and simply do not care. Therefore scientists found out a way to reuse things and that process was called "recycling". This new approach seemed quite successful at the beginning, until its true identity appeared. Recycling first started as man’s best friend, people were intrigued by this new phenomena. What could be better than using things that were already used. Recycling has been very useful especially that man is constantly consuming, burning up, wearing out, replacing and disposing at an alarming rate.(Durning 1992). However, unfortunately recycling has proven that it is quite costly. Although recycling of wastes material solves the problem of garbage disposal at landfills, and saves resources, it does nevertheless entail large hidden costs in collecting, sorting and manufacturing; therefore, it is necessary for the go vernment to overcome such problems of recycling to be worth while and for manufacturers and consumers to consume less. Recycling has proven its efficiency in solving the problem of garbage disposal at landfills1. By the accumulation of garbage throughout the years, space available for garbage has largely diminished. In the states for example almost 67% of their waste stream ends up in landfills.(Scott 25). This has in fact increased the price of disposal. As Kimball stated "tipping fees" at landfills, is so often prohibitive(3), and some cannot find landfills to dump their garbage. It can cost up to $158 to pick a ton of garbage and dispose it.(Consumer Reports 1994). Beside, these landfills pollute their surroundings area with lots of hazardous materials and contaminate underground water. To discover the contamination of the underground water it would be 12 yeas after the poisons-benzene; formaldehyde; mercury; and BCEE- have actually contaminated the land, and had sunk 24 feet into the ground contaminating about 50 million gallons of underground water.(Dahir 94). Besides these lands could be used i n more useful ways such as building schools, hospitals, or simply turning them into large green areas to purify the air. This problem is practically acute in Egypt, since we do find even in central areas of the city, piles of garbage disposal very near to... ... washed and used several times." (Scott 25). As we can see the benefits are over-estimated, and the costs are under-estimated. What we should do is not only look for an alternative but also look for other ways to improve recycling. The natural resources will not last for ever, eventually everything comes to an end and the end is very near to our natural resources. What is of greater importance is to find alternatives to such resources if they actually become extinct. Recycling is backed by most of the general public, for its ideas of saving the environment, energy, and virgin material. But it is not that good or that efficient it still costs money and is not that safe. "Recycling does not necessarily provide for safer or more environmentally sound disposal than landfilling or incinerators. The recycling process itself generates enormous amounts of hazardous wastes."(Schaumburg 32). In addition it will decrease and maybe solve the problem of the ever increasing pollution. Imagine that every time som! eone throws a piece of paper in the garbage is similar to a person cutting a leaf off a tree. This is what happens when one does so, so recycling was the way to solve such a problem.