RecyclingOne of the most important changes in how modern societies respond to the problems

Recycling

One of the most important changes in how modern societies respond to the problems of waste and its disposal is the development of techniques and processes for recycling materials that have been thrown away. Of course, recycling means that the material was cycled before. What the word really means is that the material has gone from a raw material to a factory or production process to use by a consumer. Most plastics, for example, began as crude oil from oil wells. A manufacturing process changes some of the chemicals in oil to plastics. The plastics are made into thousands of products and sent on to consumers who use them. When consumers are finished with their plastic bottles or toys or packages, they throw them away.

Unfortunately, as we often see on automobile bumper stickers, "Throw it away？ There is no away." What that means, of course, is that as we produce more and more waste, safe and easy places to put it are be coming fewer and fewer. Moreover, oil for plastics, trees for paper, and coal and oil to make heat for glass and metal production are also becoming harder to find and more expensive. One solution that can help solve problems of both supply and disposal is recycling, or using the same material more than once.

As an idea, recycling has been around for a long time. In fact, we might say that it has always been around, as long as people have used something after it has been used for something else. Using a coconut shell as a container after the coconut has been eaten may have occurred long ago. Glass jars are used to store screws or nails in many homes. Many industries have reused materials. Steel mills have added old steel to their furnaces, and glass companies have done the same with old glass. Paper has also been reused. In recent years, however, recycling is being seen as a more and more important way to reduce waste and the use of raw materials.

Many cities in the United States have begun recycling programs for household waste. Household waste, or the trash and garbage that we throw away from our homes, is made up mostly of paper. Food is the second largest part, but glass and metal are the next largest. Together, paper, glass, and metal make up almost 75 percent of the trash we throw away. If we could recycle much of that, we could greatly reduce the amount of trash we have to find a place for.

Some governments are also requiring more recycling. Japan already recycles about 50 percent of its household trash. The German government now has a very strict law requiring that most plastics and metal be recycled. This law has made a big change in the way automobiles are built and sold. Under the new law, automobile manufacturers must buy a car back when it is no longer useful. The car must then be separated into materials that can be recycled—metals, plastics, glass, and so on. This law has made automobile manufacturers think more carefully about the kinds of materials that go into automobiles and how those materials are used.

Recycling does not always go smoothly. Sometimes industries are not able to use all of the old material that is available.If paper manufacturers cannot use all of the old paper that is available, there will be no one to buy it and it will still have to be thrown away. The same is true for many metals and plastics. In Germany, problems have developed with their new law, because more materials are being recovered than manufacturers of new items can use. The government has to buy these materials, and it is costing a lot of money.

Closely related to the problem of usability is the problem of cost of recovery. There are many types of plastics, and not all of them can be reused or reused together. They have to be separated, cleaned, and sorted. Automobiles are made up of many types of metals and plastics. Separating all of these materials and recovering them for re

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