Did You Know: Recycling

Recycling Facts

I found this infographic on Pinterest and thought it was so interesting!

I LOVE Recycling!

Do you?

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Creative way to REUSE

Creative twist on reusing items

I decided to find some pictures that will inspire you to let your creativity flow in your house and turn normal everyday items that you may no longer need into something else.

Hope you enjoy and try some of these ideas

All images: Pintrest

I found all theses pictures on Pintrest - are you on Pintrest? Follow me

Amazing ideas right? Have you done anything special in your house with re-used products? Rather put a fresh spin on something then let it be thrown in a landfill!

REUSE

xXx

The Glam Green Girl





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Some Glam and Green facts on recycling

Recycling is one of the easiest ways (and one of my personal favorites) to becoming green. Here are some facts  about the products that people are recycling.

Paper

• Paper can decompose in under five months, but not if it’s a plastic bag! if its inside a bag it  won’t decompose for at least twenty years.
• Don't try and recycle anything with food or oil on it--not only is it not recyclable but it can render the other paper products around it unusable as well! So this includes used napkins which many think can be recycled as paper.
• Wet paper is also unrecyclable. This is because the wet paper fibers are shorter and less valuable to paper mills..
• If we recycled just 10% of the paper we throw out, we could save 25 million trees!
• To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down
• 40% Less energy is required to manufacture paper from recovered paper. Recycled fibre reduces air emissions in papermaking by 70%!
• Every ton of paper that is recycled, saves 17 trees
• The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.

Plastic 

• It takes up to 400 years for a plastic cup to decompose!!!
• The number inside the center of the Universal Recycling Symbol (URS) - the triangle usually on the bottom of the item - indicates the recyclability of the plastic item. If there is no number, then the material is considered “generically recyclable.”
• Recycling numbers 1,2, and often 5 are commonly accepted by most curbside recycling programs.
• Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
• Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!
• Imagine how much plastic you can save by taking your own shopping bags! Woolworths have some really chic ones that are Glam and Green ;)  

Glass

• Glass never wears out--no matter how old a bottle is, it can always be recycled.
• A glass bottle can take up to 1 million years to decompose in a landfill.
• Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!
• Mining and transporting raw materials for glass produces about 385 pounds of waste for every ton of glass that is made. If recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw materials, the waste is cut by more than 80%.
• Most bottles and jars contain at least 25% recycled glass
•  We save over a ton of resources for every ton of glass recycled -- 1,330 pounds of sand, 433 pounds of soda ash, 433 pounds of limestone, and 151 pounds of feldspar.
• Today, about 550 000 tons of waste glass finds its way into landfills in South Africa.

Aluminum

• It takes 500 years for an aluminum can to decay.
• A recycled aluminum can return, shiny and full, to the shelves of a grocery store a mere 60-90 days after they are collected by the recycling plant.
• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours.
• There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can be recycled.
• Recycling new aluminum cans from used cans takes 95 percent less energy than using virgin materials.
• Steel is made from one of the earth's most common natural resources, iron ore, as well as limestone and coal.
• Recycling one tonne of steel cans saves 1.5 tonnes of iron ore, 0.5 tonnes of coal and 40% water usage.
• Steel cans are becoming lighter. Nampak reduced the weight of our 340ml cans from 73g in 1955 to 31g today.

So there are some interesting facts on recycling that i hope u will find thought provoking

Make recycling Glam and Green

The Glam Green Girl

xXx

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Recycling 101

Recycling is the system of collecting; sorting and reprocessing old material into usuable raw materials.

This is the internationally recognised symbol for recycling. It stand for 3 elements in the recycling process. COLLECTION ---> MANUFACTURE ---> RESALE --->


Why should we recycle? well firstly, the earths resources are not going to last forever. Every day people throw away bags and bags of rubbish that gets thrown into landfills,most of the rubbish that gets thrown into these landfills can be recycled. Instead it gets placed into a landfill and doesnt ever degrade. It takes decades before the land can be used as anything, then it has limited uses. When we put a reusable resource into a landfill we decrease what is available for use.

The rate of recycling isnt as high as it could be as many peolpe find it to be too much of an effort. What most peolpe dont know is that by recycling one can, you can power a tv for 3 hpurs, or that 17 trees are saved when one tonne of paper is recycled.Government wants to reduce the amount of plastic, cans, paper and glass going to landfills by 70 percent in the next decade or so. To meet that target, households need to stop simply throwing away rubbish and start implementing the three Rs: Reduce,Reuse and Recycle.


Recycling can be easily done by having 4 bins in your household

1. PAPER
2. PLASTIC
3. GLASS
4. TIN

• Glass is 100 percent recyclable but it is not biodegrabale. The raw materials for glass – sand, soda and lime – all have to be dug from the earth and melted together at very high temperatures. Energy is saved by recycling. Every ton of glass recycled also saves 1,2 tons of raw materials
• Cans are 100 percent recyclable. They are melted down to make new steel. This reduces the need to mine new iron ore and saves on the energy used to mine and process it.

Why should we recycle?

• Saves Natural Resources - By making products from recycled materials, we conserve land and reduce the need to drill for oil and dig for minerals.
• Saves Energy - It usually takes less energy to make recycled products
• Saves Clean Air and Water - In most cases, making products from recycled materials creates less air pollution and water pollution than making products from virgin materials.
• Saves Landfill Space - When the materials that you recycle go into new products, they don't go into landfills or incinerators, so landfill space is conserved.
• Saves Money and Creates Jobs - The recycling process creates far more jobs than landfills or incinerators, and recycling can frequently be the least expensive waste management method for cities and towns.

If each person plays their part; recycling can change the world.

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