On Junk: Does it Recycle?

How common is recycling in today's day and age? How relevant is recycling exactly? Most importantly, does it really work? These are probably some questions you have asked yourself every now and then, more than likely during your weekly trip in carrying out your trash bins for pickup if that is something that you take care of. You wonder, as I definitely have before, if the effort of dividing your trash into these separate bins is worth the effort, or if there any point to it if you see every bin go into the same car. despite what your stance on this question is, I wish to address you to this sight:

In retrospect, probably not as shocking as I would like it to be, but does that bother me; well yes. It does not bother me that this amateur photographer was not able to capture the scale of this pile, but the pile itself is what bothers me. This is a pile of recyclable material gathered at the Burbank Recycle Center. Why should this pile be a shock to you; well just keep reading to find out.

The average american throws away about 1500 pounds of trash in a year. That means that every year America produces around 254 million pounds of trash a year. to put into an imaginative sum, 127,000 tones of trash are produced in America every year. That is enough trash every year to fill a football stadium sized hole a hundred miles deep.

To give more of an insight on the epidemic of our production of trash many documentaries have been produced to shine a light on this subject, of which a notable one being Trashed. Trashed, starring Jeremy Irons of British Top Gear fame, gives an insight as to the effects of disposing the disposable, and the harm it has to the environment. Whether it be pollution through the unnatural decomposing of some products, the waste in producing the waste in question, the Eco systemic impact it has when letting it accumulate, and the severity in quantity, not finding a solution for our wasteful habits is having huge implications. Just like other social issues in our societies (drunk driving, abuse, drugs), this is something that needs to be addressed just as much, because when it is being address then it is being talked about, and in this conversation we can find a solution to this problem.