Recycling is a daily activity for more than 100 million Americans and a great way to protect our environment and stimulate our economy. Recycling saves resources, prevents pollution, supports public health, and creates jobs. It saves money, avoids landfills, and best of all, it’s easy.
As we consume our natural resources at an unsustainable rate, the need for recycling is becoming more and more pressing.
It is an important way for individuals and businesses to reduce the waste they generate and reduce the negative impact of that waste. Nearly 90% of what we throw away could potentially be recovered through reuse, recycling or composting.
Today more Americans recycle than vote. Some communities currently recycle and compost more than 60% of their waste.
However, the value of recycling is still largely disregarded across the country.
We can never emphasize too much on the importance of recycling and how it benefits our environment.

Making products with recycled material slows the depletion of non-renewable resources such as metal, oil and natural gas, and reduces the encroachment of new mining and drilling operations. Conserving renewable resources through recycling also helps preserve undisturbed land and natural diversity by reducing the amount of land needed for agriculture and timber production.

By recycling about 30% of our waste every year, Americans save the equivalent of 11.9 billion gallons of gasoline and reduce the greenhouse gas equivalent of taking 25 million cars off the road.

When recycled materials are used in place of virgin materials during manufacturing, we avoid the environmental damage caused by mining for metals, drilling for petroleum, and harvesting trees. Producing recycled white paper creates 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution than producing paper from virgin fibers. Using recycled cans instead of extracting ore to make aluminum cans produces 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution. Recycling and manufacturing are 194 times more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions than land filling and virgin manufacturing.

Selling recyclable materials offsets the extra costs of collecting and processing recyclables, making recycling the cheaper option for the community. Plus, all the environmental benefits of recycling, such as reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, have economic value as well— more than $55 per ton compared to land filling.

For every one job at a landfill, there are ten jobs in recycling processing and 25 jobs in recycling-based manufacturing. The recycling industry employs more workers than the auto industry.