Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
Every year, Americans throw away 50 billion food and drink cans, 27 billion glass bottles and jars, and 65 million plastic and metal jar and can covers. More than 30% of our waste is packaging materials. Where does it all go? Some 85% of our garbage is sent to a dump, or landfill, although we are quickly running out of space. We've all heard of the 3 Rs of the environment: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, but do we practice what we preach?
As a mission driven low-profit private enterprise, one of our key priorities at the 88 Group is to foster the continued development and ongoing research of sustainable solutions for effective and meaningful waste management in Pueblo, Colorado.
Benefits of Recycling
Reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators
Conserves natural resources such as timber, water and minerals
Increases economic security by tapping a domestic source of materials
Prevents pollution by reducing the need to collect new raw materials
Saves energy
Supports American manufacturing and conserves valuable resources
Helps create jobs in the recycling and manufacturing industries in the United States
Learn how reducing, reusing, and recycling can help you, your community, and the environment by saving money, energy, and natural resources. Recycling programs are managed at the state and local level—find information on recycling in your community.
ZERO WASTE
Zero waste is a philosophy and a design principle for the 21st century. It includes reducing, reusing, recycling, and composting, but goes beyond that by taking a whole system approach to the vast flow of resources and waste through society.
Zero waste reduces consumption, minimizes waste, maximizes recycling and composting, and ensures that products are made to be reused, repaired or recycled back into nature or the marketplace. Recycling conserves natural resources by reducing our need to mine for raw materials, reduces energy consumption necessary to manufacture new materials from scratch, and creates less air, soil, and water pollution.
Pueblo Sustainable Solutions L3C is committed to improving sustainability and recognizes that it can be integrated into many different disciplines found in daily life.
E-WASTE
We all love our cell phones, tablets, and flat screen TVs. Many of us also love to replace those gadgets every couple of years with the latest and greatest new models. Around the world, 30 to 50 million tons of electronic devices are tossed away every year. That volume of e-waste is expected to increase by an impressive three to five percent per year as consumers demand more and more “smart” products. But where do all those older electronic devices end up?
Too many of those devices today end up forgotten in a desk drawer or, worse, in a landfill. But the authors of an Atlas award-winning report published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews expect this to change. They’ve now conducted an economic assessment that lays the groundwork to assist in decision-making around e-waste recycling programs designed to ensure that the valuable materials contained within electronic products will find a second life.
A Look at the cycle of glass from start to finish
RECYCLING SAVES RESOURCES AND CREATES JOBS
EPA released significant findings on the economic benefits of the recycling industry with an update to the national Recycling Economic Information (REI) Study in 2016. This study analyzes the numbers of jobs, wages and tax revenues attributed to recycling. The study found that in a single year, recycling and reuse activities in the United States accounted for:
- 757,000 jobs
- $36.6 billion in wages; and
- $6.7 billion in tax revenues.
This equates to 1.57 jobs, $76,000 in wages, and $14,101 in tax revenues for every 1,000 tons of materials recycled.
The REI study also analyzes Construction and Demolition (C&D) materials. Of the jobs, wages and revenues generated from this EPA data, C&D recycling account for almost 232,000 jobs, more than $11.6 billion in wages, and nearly $1.9 billion in taxes, which is more jobs, wages, and revenue generated than any other material measured in the study.
For more information, check out the full report.
We go inside a recycling plant and a bottle factory to see the technology that turns used glass into new bottles.
EXPANDED GLASS RECYCLING IN PUEBLO
Glass recycling helps the environment. The amount of energy needed to melt recycled glass is considerably less than that needed to melt raw materials to make new bottles and jars. Recycling one bottle can save enough energy to power a television set for one and a half hours.
Modern life just would not be possible without glass. From the jar that holds the morning marmalade, the mirror in which we brush our teeth, the windows and car windscreen we look through, the computer screen many of us use at work every day to the light bulb we switch off last thing at night; glass is around us everywhere.
Glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly without loss in quality or purity - something few food and beverage packaging options can claim.
But what is this amazing substance, where does it come from, how is it made, and why is it so easy and effective to recycle?
Glass is a combination of sand and other minerals that are melted together at very high temperatures to form a material that is ideal for a wide range of uses from packaging and construction to fibre optics.
Glass, structurally, is actually more like a liquid, but at room temperature it is so viscous or ’sticky’ it looks and feels like a solid. At higher temperatures glass gradually becomes softer and more like a liquid. It is this latter property which allows glass to be poured, blown, pressed and molded into such a variety of shapes.
Glass is made by melting together several minerals at very high temperatures. Silica in the form of sand is the main ingredient and this is combined with soda ash and limestone and melted in a furnace at temperatures of 1600oC. Other materials can be added to produce different colours or properties. Glass can also be coated, heat-treated, engraved or decorated.
While still molten, glass can be manipulated to form packaging, car windscreens, glazing or numerous other products. Depending on the end use, the composition of the glass and the rate at which it is allowed to cool will vary, as these two factors are crucial in obtaining the properties the glass maker is seeking to achieve.