Does recycling help climate change?

 

Does recycling help climate change?

Recycling is a wonderful thing, and it has become ingrained in our daily lives over time. Recycling decreases trash, reduces pollution, and has influenced many people to become more environmentally conscious, even if they didn't initially convince. But, despite its numerous advantages, is recycling truly making a difference everywhere? Is recycling, for example, helpful in combating climate change?

Climate change and waste are becoming increasingly severe concerns worldwide; it's critical to understand how these two important challenges interact. Recycling helps alleviate the climate crisis in two ways: it reduces the number of raw materials consumed and the amount of waste in landfills. Between 2020 and 2050, Project Drawdown projects recycling will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 5.5-6.02 gigatons (equivalent to taking over 1 billion cars off the streets for one year). That's a significant reduction from a simple lifestyle adjustment, making recycling a cost-effective and straightforward way to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the climate problem.

Impact of Landfills

• When items are thrown in landfills, they decompose anaerobically. 
• Landfills emit a lot of methane due to anaerobic decomposition.
• Methane is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, meaning it has 34 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.
• As a result, it's critical to ensure that you're dumping as little as possible into the trash and instead focusing on recycling and upcycling.

Recycling

• When an item is recycled, it is processed and transformed into something new, rather than being created from virgin material or handled as waste in a landfill.
• Recycling with the purpose of creating something new generally uses less energy than creating a product from raw materials.
• Upcycling glass bottles is exceptionally efficient. Using empty bottle scraps to make glass planters, glass crockeries, and beautiful vases saves many bottles from getting into the landfills. Producing these items requires so much energy; this can be significantly decreased by using upcycled items.
• The less energy utilized to manufacture a product; the fewer greenhouse gases are released. This is great for climate change, as greenhouse gas emissions are one of the leading causes of the current issue.

"According to the US EPA, Over 70% of wine bottles go straight to landfills. we collect hundreds of bottles every week with a mission to recycle them."

 

What Can You Do?

• Purchase items created from recycled materials or those that have been given a new life through upcycling! This will boost the market for recycled goods and encourage the recycling and upcycling of resources and the manufacture of recycled goods.
• Upcycle as much as possible! Learn what is recyclable and upcycleable, and upcycle everything that is.
• To reduce disposable item creation, limit the number of disposable products you purchase in the first place.
• Replace disposable things with reusable ones! 

Our Contribution

A new glass bottles require a lot of heat to melt, between 1400 and 1600 degrees Celsius, depending upon the composition of a glass. It requires raw material, energy consumption, water consumption, etc. While, the recycled glass bottles also require a lot of heat to melt, between 650 and 800 degrees Celsius, but that's still around 45 to 50 percent less than making a glass bottle from scratch. The reduction in new raw material consumption can reduce energy consumption, air pollution, water consumption, and even greenhouse gas emissions.

Hence, we are opting a slightly different route than the above two. We’re going to utilize the empty glass bottles and using it as a home décor in our houses.

We eliminate a tier or two of the recycling process, which comprises collecting, sorting, processing and breaking down, conversion, and eventually production.