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In every heaping landfill, there lies a storage of valuable resources--reusable glass containers, metals, recyclable plastic and paper, and waste that is high in organic content.  Recycling can help us reuse much of what we throw out before it reaches a landfill.

What do we throw away that can be recycled?

• Paper:  Paper makes up of 36% of our solid waste!  The burning of paper gives off air pollution, while the recycling of paper cuts our waste load over a third, and saves precious forests.




Pop Quiz:


If every newspaper printed just for one Sunday edition for the New York Times were to be recycled, we would save 1,000 10,000 25,000 50,000 75,000  trees.

Important Fact

By recycling all of your newspapers for one year, you alone can save four trees, 2200 gallons of water, and fifteen pounds of air pollutants!

Paper recycling uses only one fourth to three quarters of the energy used to produce paper from raw materials, and half as much water.  Recycled paper is useful in the production of cereal boxes, newsprint, cardboard, tissue paper, wallboard, and the bases for writing pads.  The only negative side to paper recycling is that the bleaching process used to clean the paper creates pollutants.
 

• Aluminum cans: These cans take a lot of energy to be made from scratch.  If you recycle soda cans, the energy used and air pollution is cut by 95% than the production of cans from pure bauxite.  Each soda can recycled saves energy equal to half a can of gasoline!
• Steel cans: These cans, just in U.S. landfills, weighed about 2.5 million tons in 1986.  These cans have an outer coating of tin, which is very expensive and imported into the U.S.  This tin can be recovered and resold, or used to make new cans.  The steel can should also be reclaimed.
• Glass bottles: Glass bottles comprise 8% of our garbage.  Two types of glass bottles are manufactured--refillable and nonrefillable.  The reusable type is heavier and sturdier, and just needs a thorough cleaning for it to be recycled up to thirty times.  The other type, which is nonreusable, can be melted with raw materials to produce new glass bottles.  However, this option requires a lot of energy, so the refillable bottles are preferable.
• Plastics: Plastics make up 7% of our waste by weight, but a shocking 32% by volume!  Plastics take hundreds or thousands of years to decompose, so they are essentially permanent in the landfills.  Plastic is currently made from petroleum and natural gas, but future plastics are most likely to come from plant and animal matter.
• Yard wastes: Organic wastes make up 1/5 of the garbage flow, which is about 28 million tons every year.  Instead of being thrown out, yard waste can be composted to make nutrient rich soil.

The United States generates more garbage than anywhere else in the world.

Why are trees so important?

Paper or Plastic?
    How many times have you been asked this question in the grocery store?  Environmentalists have often debated over the correct answer, which turns out to be NEITHER!  To help the environment, you should purchase reusable canvas bags, which will never have to take energy to be recycled or take up space in a landfill.
 

• A dismantler first removes parts that can be resold, such as the battery, tires, gas tank, and operating fluids.
• The hulk is crushed and sent to a shreader
• The shreader tears it into chunks which are seperated into iron and non iron metals.
• 75 percent of the weight of automobiles is recovered and recycled.
• The 25 percent which remains consists of 1/3 plastics, 1/3 rubber and other materials like it, and 1/3 glass, fluids and fibers-called fluff.
• Fluff makes up to about one percent of all city wastes.
• Occasionally fluff is contaminated with oils and heavy metals, or other hazardous materials.
• Now automobile companies are exploring how to make automobiles 100% recyclable.

     The gases which we release into the atmosphere because of transportation has or will eventually raise the temperature on the earth, this will effect the ecosystems, biodiversity and the major cycles of nature. Our earth has withstood so many changes such as the movement of the continents, bombardment of space debris, the ice ages and many more. Now our species alone threatens not only it's survival but our own. The average temperature has risen from the last ice age nine degrees, and the temperature will rise three to eight more degrees by the year 2050, and then every 60 years from there after.
   If the global warming continues scientists have predicted these events will take place;

• When water becomes warm it expands, the sea level will rise and the ice caps will melt, creating more floods.
• The difference in temperatures will increase the amount and the intensity of storms.
• There will be changes in the productivity of organisms and the ocean's circulation patterns.
• How ecosystems function, the interactions within organisms community, evolution, breeding and the ability for organisms to survive are predicted to be altered.
• Plants and animals capacity to change may become slower than the climatic changes which occur, making it difficult for them to adapt to oncoming changes.
• Vegetation species will alter in position, and deserts will move northward and vegetation will increase in the north.
• Different species will be affected; the migratory patterns of birds will alter due to the different distribution of their food sources, the sex ratios of crocodiles and alligators will alter for their sex is determined by the temperature of the egg during incubation, and Spring will come earlier and Autumn will come later- effecting fruits and flowers (there is a lot more but I think you get the point).
• The wetlands will flood, and the saltwater will erode them.
• Whatever wildlife is left will be housed in air conditioned zoos.
• The moistore of soil will decline, increasing the amount of fires and the distribution of species. This will allow pests to spread.

In Glacier National Park, near Logan's Pass, there are many Rocky Mountain goats who don't make their home in their natural ecosystem, but lounge around the parking lot.  They enjoy licking the anti-freeze from cars, because they like the salt!  Here are a few photographs of these goats in their natural and human-impacted habitats:
 

     Recreation and tourism can benefit and yet harm nature. It is up to us to make our travels filled with safety and fun, both for us and the environment around us. In order to do this we have to depend on clean ecosystems-and keeping it that way.
    These trips and travels which we all go on have a positive and a negative side.

The negative impacts of traveling and recreation are;

• A particular site is visited so much the carrying capacity exceeds that of the site (an example can be seen in Yosemite National Park).
• Visitors pollute, walk and destroy fragile ecosystems, disrupt wildlife, and take advantage of the local inhabitants.
• The people who do not receive financial benefit or do no participate in ecotourism are the local people.

The positive impacts are;

• Through the funds of ecotourism protected-area's of land can be purchased and be managed.
• Income is provided for local communities and governments.
• Tourists learn about different environments and how to act in them.
• Wildlife and many environments are protected.

By following and remembering these principles of ecology we can learn and become more responsible in what we do during our recreation and traveling time;

• All things are connected to one another.
• The earth is fragile and is houses a closed life support system which cannot be endlessly developed and survive those by-products.
• Every single environment has a "carrying capacity".
• Nature is a place where there are huge amounts of organisms working together in symbiosis (symbiosis means a partnership or coming from the Greek work it means "life together").
• Through small relationships with the soil, water, and climate cycles, organisms have adapted to their particular ecosystems.