What if everyone in the world stopped recycling? Imagine walking down the streets and smelling the stench of rotting garbage. The ocean is polluted with plastic waste and the air is contaminated with greenhouse gases. People today throw soda cans into the trash without a care in the world. But what they don’t know is that they are contributing to the deterioration of the planet. If you’re one of those people who walks past recyclable materials on the ground, you are one of the many factors that affect the environment. According to Bonnie Gringer in her article The trash one person produces in one year, states “Collectively, out of the 254 million tons of trash Americans can produce in one year, we recycle about 34.3 percent of it.” In spite of our efforts, we recycle about only one third of the waste we produce. Recycling must be encouraged because it not only reduces pollution, but also creates jobs, and saves energy.

Pollution can be prevented just by recycling. Piles of disposable waste and toxic substances contaminate the air and cause pollution. Most people do not realize the factors caused of which creates pollution. By recycling materials, such as plastic, can less likely form greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are produced when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. From recycling plastic, contributes to the reduction in the need for virgin material. Thus resulting in avoiding extraction and mining of virgin material which prevents greenhouse gas exposure. The article Boulder County acknowledges this process and states “Recycling helps to reduce the pollution caused by the extraction and processing of virgin materials.'' Thus from recycling, the environment can benefit rather than worsening from the production of materials.

Recycling not only helps the environment but can also help the economy. People spend hours or even days cleaning the waste from the ground and disposing of them. Recycling can help create more jobs for people who believe in helping the environment. People can gain jobs in manufacturing businesses. After materials are collected from locations, they are sent to a factory where they are sorted by the product they are made out of, thus creating jobs for people. In the article EcoCycle it states “By improving our national recycling rate to 75% by 2030, the U.S. could create 1.1 million new jobs.” This article acknowledges that the more recycling people do, the more jobs that it creates for people in the environment. By creating more jobs, more people can get involved in the community to help save their surroundings. The remains of material can be used in other manufacturer businesses. In fact, recycling can create more jobs than disposing and burning of the materials. A particular manufacturing business that uses recycled materials is a company called Green Toys. This innovative company produces and sells children toys converted from recycled milk jugs. Currently they have recycled fifty five million milk jugs in the ten years the business was created.

One of the many reasons people recycle is to simply save the environment. Manufacturing materials requires less energy than exporting and converting. By saving energy, it makes living in the environment much easier for people and animals. People depend on energy for living and functioning. Without energy, resources will be limited and survival will be almost unimaginable. A way to save energy is by recycling. The recycling process produces less energy because reusable materials are easily processed. Although that saving energy results in what materials are being processed, ultimately all recycling business save energy. In addition saving energy also results in preserving the amount of money from the process. In the article AGI it regozines this development and expresses “For many commonly recycled products, the energy savings also help to make recycling cheaper than extracting and processing raw resources.” This states that just by recycling, money will be saved and used for more reasonable circumstances rather than the destruction of materials.

Ultimately recycling can result in a healthier environment for people. By recycling, pollution will decrease and reduce the amount of harmful gases in the air. Recycling can create jobs for people in the facilities and make the community more involved in environmental activities. The energy from the recycling will be conserved and create better elements of life. Recycling is one of the best ways to make a positive impact on nature. It is essential to start recycling so that  harmful substances are not released into the environment. A helpful way to remember recycling to prevent unhealthy actions is by the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This means to reduce the amount of materials in the natural environment. Reuse stands for reusing the item in a same or different way and recycle stands for taking the used materials and using it as new. So the next time you see waste in the environment, think of the ways your small step of picking it up will affect the world around you.