Recycling is permeating the public consciousness to levels never before conceived. And with an increasing number of communities and waste removal services adopting recycling, some knowledge of how the program works is useful. The homeowner should become fully informed as to what materials can be recycled and how best to sort and prepare them for pickup by the local waste collection service.
First, let’s understand the purposes of recycling. Industrial production of paper products, aluminum cans, plastic containers, and a myriad of other items on the market, made for our convenience in a disposable society, generates megatons of pollutants every year which gets pumped into the environment. Also, standard disposal of these waste items is becoming more and more problematic as landfill space becomes increasingly scarce in communities nationwide. Recycling solves, or at least substantially reduces, both these problems. By breaking down existing material for reuse, less energy is expended in the process and so too is the amount of carbon injected into the atmosphere by burning less fuel to produce that energy. Also, each piece of scrap plastic or paper or aluminum replaces the oil needed to make more plastic, another tree otherwise felled, another bulk extraction of ore from the ground. By reducing the amount of waste otherwise piling up by recycling the material instead, the tonnage of waste going into landfills is also substantially reduced. From both environmental and economic standpoints, recycling is a far better option than endless production, consumption, and disposal.
Material for recycling has to be sorted first. This is because different materials have different requirements for processing. Therefore, keeping cans, plastic bottles, and paper and cardboard in separate containers is imperative, as providers of Residential Waste Recycling Services need to collect and store the material in separate bins. It is not a difficult exercise and it helps keep the household better organized. Aluminum and paper can more or less be taken as is. Plastic bottles and containers, on the other hand, have limitations. Look for a triangular mark with a number somewhere on the plastic item. This indicates by code which item needs to be sorted into which category. Plastic items without a recycling icon are unsuitable and cannot be processed. Recyclers won’t take them. Neither will they take styrofoam products.
The web page Website.com outlines the waste management services available to residential customers in San Antonio, including Residential Waste Recycling Services. You can also visit them on Google+ for more information.
