What Would Happen If Everyone Recycled? (2024)

FAQs

What Would Happen If Everyone Recycled? ›

One of the most significant impacts of widespread recycling would be the reduction in resource depletion. Recycling conserves valuable raw materials, such as metals, plastics, and paper, by diverting them from landfills and incinerators.

Without recycling, more waste would be sent to landfills, which are already overflowing in many parts of the world. This would create a significant environmental problem, as landfills take up space and generate greenhouse gas emissions.

Do this over your lifetime and you can save an entire forest! By recycling your household items, you can keep 1000 pounds of trash out of the landfill each year! By recycling one plastic water bottle each day, rather than throwing it in the trash, you will keep 20 pounds of plastic out of a landfill.

By using a reusable water bottle, you could prevent an average of 156 plastic bottles from filling our oceans annually. Every year, 15 million tons of plastic enter the sea at a minimum. And experts predict that plastic will outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050 unless we make a change³.

Reduced landfill use

If more plastics are being recycled, it means less are ending up in landfills. Another benefit is that fewer plastics in landfills means less emission of common landfill gases, like carbon dioxide and methane. Both of these gases cause environmental damage.

Reduced Waste in Landfills

If everyone recycled, we would significantly decrease the volume of waste sent to landfills, alleviating these environmental and health hazards.

There would be upsides to a world without plastic, though: we'd escape the harmful effects it has on our health. Turning oil and gas into plastic releases toxic gases that pollute the air and impact local communities.

Recycling provides many benefits to our environment. By recycling our materials, we create a healthier planet for ourselves and future generations. Conserve natural resources: Recycling reduces the need to extract resources such as timber, water, and minerals for new products.

By diverting waste from landfills and incinerators, recycling decreases the release of harmful greenhouse gases and toxic pollutants into the air. Consequently, cleaner air quality improves respiratory health and reduces the risk of respiratory illnesses, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

It is estimated that up to 13 million metric tons of plastic ends up in the ocean each year—the equivalent of a rubbish or garbage truck load's worth every minute. Fish, seabirds, sea turtles, and marine mammals can become entangled in or ingest plastic debris, causing suffocation, starvation, and drowning.

Do water bottles actually get recycled? ›

PET plastic bottles and jars have an overall recycling rate of 29.1%, according to the EPA. On that same webpage, EPA reports the recycling rate for ALL plastic (PET, HDPE, PP, etc.) is 8.7%. PET plastic is among the easiest packaging types to recycle.

Materials used in water bottles and other food containers, such as BPA, are safe. All in all, water in plastic bottles is safe to drink.

Around 85% of plastic water bottles, which can take up to 1,000 years to degrade, end up as waste, according to the report. They also end up in the ocean, adding to a vast swirl of plastic waste that poses a serious threat to marine life.

If everyone in the world stopped recycling, we would be up to our ears in no time in — you guessed it — garbage. Waste disposal has become a huge problem in many parts of the world. And here in the United States, we produce more garbage than practically anywhere else.

If more people around the world recycled, it could help minimize the negative impact of pollution, including debris littered across land and water. If everyone in the world recycled, there would likely not be as large a collection of plastic floating in the ocean between Japan to the West Coast of North America.

But with that, comes an environmental price: Materials that make up plastic do not exist in nature, and therefore, can not naturally break down effectively. Although you can recycle plastic, it takes time to decompose, threatens wildlife, and spreads toxins in the environment.

The first consequence from not recycling would be pollution. There are many different kinds of pollution. For example, the Styrofoam which carries water or coffee pollutes the ground by leaking nasty chemicals into the soil. If enough of these chemicals build-up, this can cause cancer.

There are increasing high levels of man-made pollution in many of the world's seas and little actually disappears. By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the world's oceans. We live on a blue planet; the world's oceans cover three quarters of the Earth.

Recycling is not always as transparent as it needs to be and in many cases, non-recyclable items will end up in landfills which isn't ideal but as long as the recyclable items are dealt with properly you are still making a positive impact.