The Only Resource On The Planet That Is Not In Decline
If you haven’t figured this out, there is no need to be embarrassed. The answer is not a word that we would commonly put in the same sentence as “resource.”
Resources have a special place in our ecological word speak. They are aligned with Mother Earth, sustainability, ecosystems, and a host of other soothing terms we use to describe the types of positive synergies and interrelationships between ourselves and our environment.
These are all ideas we are trying to achieve before we manage to set the planet on its final path to total flame-out.
On the other hand, the word that answers this question is raw, wreaks of excesses, and refers to things that have historically been wholly abandoned and banished to the nether regions and darkest corners of our world.
If you haven’t already guessed, the only resource on the planet that is not in decline is waste. In fact, it’s a resource that is growing, and at a fairly alarming rate.. So let’s talk about that.
Characteristically, waste has a wholly negative connotation. According to Wikipedia:
Waste and wastes are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance that is discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective, and of no use.
Really? To anyone in the recycling industry, this definition is extremely narrow and inadequate.
Waste is produced using energy and resources. It contains energy and resources no matter what form it is in and that energy and those resources can be released and reused. But only if only we have the means and the will to do that.
We are talking not only about, our area of recycling, which is scrap metal but also plastics, bio-waste, food waste, and any other kind of waste that you can think of.
We can now take plastic and extract the petroleum that was used to make it.
We can take food waste and use it to grow food.
We can create electricity from waste. And so and so on and so on. It not only makes sense to do this it is also extremely efficient and lowers the global impact of extraction and processing on the world’s resources and energy usage/
We Need A Change Of Perspective More Than Ever These Days
In a world of ever-expanding demand, that continues to over-stress the environment with landfills and deplete traditional supplies of non-renewable resources, the ability to recover resources and reuse them should be incentive enough to look at the problem of waste in a practical way.
Think about nature, which has perfectly balanced production and decomposition to ensure sustainability. Waste products created by organisms and natural processes are entirely recycled by other organisms and processes.
Human beings, on the other hand, produce approximately 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage in a year.
In Canada, we generate 31 million tons of garbage per year – about twice as much per person as in Japan. Of that 31 million tons, about 67% goes to over 10,000 landfill sites where plastic and glass will take about a million years to break down, aluminum cans 500 years to disintegrate, tin cans 100 years to dissolve, and paper 80 years to break down.
And, the health and environmental concerns associated with these sites are just as disturbing.
Resource Make A New Commitment To Recycling
The amount of readily available information, statistics, and technical discussion on this topic is legion.
Environmental change is the ultimate grassroots movement. Because its larger impact is a direct result of millions of smaller actions on the part of people in their everyday lives.
At Peel, our business is the recycling of ferrous and nonferrous metals for the express purpose of re-use. But our passion is working to be a key part of the movement to recycle as much as is humanely possible.
And that effort starts right in the homes and businesses of our country. And how it succeeds when people develop the mindset and habits that support recycling to the best of their abilities.
It may be a little extra work each week, but that little extra can add up to a big difference in our future. And that’s a proven fact.
Make The Choice…Start A New Habit
Don’t Let Your Garbage Go To Waste.
The clock is ticking: Here is some interesting reading:
http://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/shocking_environmental_facts_and_statistics/world_waste_facts
Download Our Updated Mobile App.
Just a reminder that our mobile app has been updated in both mobile operating systems.
If you haven’t done so already, this is free to download and available at both the iTunes and Google Play stores. It will keep you current on prices in addition to providing other useful links and information. (Search: Peel Scrap Metal Recycling)
Download for Apple mobile devices
Download for Android mobile devices