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Recycling is a process that uses parts of a discarded product to make new products. A Recycling Center helps to reduce the amount of waste that goes into landfills, which can potentially lessen the potential risk of hazardous chemicals, like lead or mercury, from leaching into the soil. Products made from recycled components require less energy during production than those produced from all new materials.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 75 percent of our waste can be recycled at a recycling center. Most are familiar with recycling bins for plastic and aluminum, but many other products can be recycled as well. Batteries, old electronics, timber, glass, garden waste, and even paint, can all be recycled into new products.

Various options exist for those wishing to recycle. Many schools, churches, and community centers offer large recycling bins where people can drop off waste. With the popularity of recycling growing, however, more convenient programs like curbside recycling now serve about half of the U.S. population. Although each curbside program differs depending on location, most recycle aluminum, glass, paper, plastic, and steel.

Most programs use dual-stream recycling, where plastic containers are put into one bin and paper into another. On pick-up day, the containers are placed on the curb and picked up by recycling workers. Other programs allow all recycled materials to be packaged together. Some residences may have pay-as-you-throw trash collection programs that charge per trash bag and offer curbside recycling at no extra cost.

Once recyclable materials are picked up, they are taken to a central recycling center and sorted. The materials are separated by weight, with paper recycling and plastic s sent one way and cans and glass sent another. The rest of the sorting is done by a combination of manual and automated sorting processes.

Recycling plastic can be complicated due to the many types of plastic used in today’s products. Plastics are separated based on how much resin it contains. These varying types of plastics must be recycled in different ways, making recycling plastic more difficult than recycling other products. Although labels do not need to be removed from plastic containers, recycling centers do ask that plastic lids be removed because they are usually made from non-recyclable plastic. Depending on the type of plastic, recycled plastic products will eventually end up as new bottles, grocery bags, pipes, toys, and auto parts.

Paper Recycling has done a lot of to cut on the amount of waste we Americans add to our landfills each year. Paper recycling is begun by de-coloring paper that is colored or written on through a process called deinking. It is then broken down into a pulp which is mixed with new pulp to create recycled paper. Paper recycling, however, does not account for all types of paper. Waxed paper, gift-wrapping paper, or paper coated with plastic are usually too expensive to recycle. Similarly, many recycling centers ask that glossy inserts be removed from newspapers because it creates a sludge within the pulp that must be disposed of later.

Steel and other metals are some of the easiest materials to recycle into new products. It is simply separated from the rest of the recyclable materials and re-melted. Similarly, aluminum is separated, crushed, and melted. Neither steel nor aluminum lose any quality after being recycled and can be considered brand new materials that eventually help to build cars, bicycles, planes, and skyscrapers.

Recycling plastic, papers, glass, and other materials not only helps the environment. It also creates jobs and reduces dependence on foreign oil. Although recycling is most beneficial at an aggregate level, personal and residential responsibility plays a major role in making sure that communities do their part to recycle.