From Garbage to Gold

From Garbage to Gold

The word “recycling” usually invokes images of cardboard and plastic-bottle recycling bins, accompanied by some cliché slogan such as “Recycle. Reduce. Reuse.” However, recycling has a far greater impact on humanity than any slogan can ever imply. If one were to view the history of life on Earth as a single, 24-hour day, humans would appear just over a second before midnight! Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old and according to scientists, modern humans did not exist until approximately 200,000 years ago. During this brief “flash-in-the-pan” of existence, they have managed to dominate the Earth in a way that no species has ever done before. This is due to the fact that as the human race expands, it demands an ever-growing amount of fuel, water, land, food, shelter, technology, and the energy necessary to produce, deliver, and operate these goods and services. Recycling not only reduces the burden that modern society places on the planet when population numbers grow, but also provides many benefits, such as: reducing or eliminating municipal, industrial and commercial waste; reducing litter; reducing energy consumption by limiting the need for mining, transporting, and converting of raw materials into goods; limiting pollution via lower energy consumption, less waste, reduced emissions, and the conservation of precious, natural resources; and stimulating the economy with new jobs, increased savings, and higher profit margins for commercial, industrial, and agricultural production.

All forms of production require large amounts of electricity and the mining of raw materials from the Earth for new products and services. As the population grows, companies must keep up with demand for their products and ...

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...cycling certainly is a necessity, but with humanity’s busy lifestyles they will continue to be driven by the choice of convenience, rather than responsibility. By making recycling mandatory, governments, businesses, and consumers would be forced to create more efficient methods and programs to ensure compliance with the new law; as a result, the decrease of municipal, industrial, and commercial waste, litter, pollution, and energy consumption; the reduction of mining, transporting, and conversion of raw materials into goods; the limiting of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions; and the conservation of natural resources would stimulate the economy with new jobs, increased savings, and higher profit margins for consumers and commercial, industrial, and agricultural business. Recycling laws would achieve nothing less, than delivering humanity into a new Golden Age.