Every Little Bit

One of the things that I am passionate about is environmental conservation. I am not an activist in the sense of people who gather together and march with signs and slogans. I prefer a lower key approach. For years now, I have recycled everything that I can. I started recycling glass bottles when I was a child. However, my motives were not that altruistic at that age. My motive was the acquisition of candy at the store! Back then, anyone could return soft drink bottles to a grocery store and receive five cents per bottle. The bottles would be washed by the soda companies and reused. On a good day of scavenging my little friends and I might each find ten or fifteen bottles that had been thrown behind some bush or into a creek. We would haul our booty to the store, get our cash, and buy a delicious candy bar or maybe a honey bun. Later in life, when reusable glass bottles had been replaced by disposable plastic, and after my consciousness of the limited supply of energy and natural resources that our planet could provide had been raised by several orders of magnitude, I decided that in order to facilitate a more morally justifiable existence for myself, I would have to try and be a less wasteful person. I started with aluminum cans. Recycling an aluminum can takes only a few percent of the energy needed to produce one from aluminum containing bauxite ore, so it was quite logical, from a purely economic standpoint, for aluminum recycling programs to lead the way. As community recycling programs became more comprehensive, I began to recycle more. Number one and number two plastic, glass, steel cans, newspaper, and cardboard. Recently, I found a place where I could recycle junk mail! Every little bit that I save from the landfill means that a tree might remain standing, or a bit of oil needn't be burned to power a generator to make new products from unrefined materials. What if everyone recycled? Well, at this time, practically speaking, there just isn't a market for everyone's recycled waste. It would gather in mountain sized heaps and mostly sit unused for many years to come. But, given time, maybe companies would spring up with innovative uses for all these nearly free materials. The main costs of recycling are in the sorting of combined materials and the transportation of those materials to a reuse facility. Recycling in mass actually occurred for a few years in America. During WWII, nearly everyone in America participated in recycling. It was a patriotic duty to recycle everything possible so that it could be efficiently converted into war materials. My mother was a "Block Buster", which was in some ways similar to being a girl scout, I suppose. Anyway, it was her job to walk around her neighborhood with her little Block Buster hat on and collect any recyclable materials that her neighbors might have. This sort of thing was repeated all over the country. It was really quite amazing, and it worked! Mass recycling is possible, and it can happen if enough people want it too. Do you recycle? Please remember, every little bit helps!