matt.hope



== Recycling is a very important thing to help save our environment. This Web page will help you understand why we recycle and what it does to help to improve our environment. We will also be talking about the history of recycling and the solutions to helping the environment. == media type="custom" key="7966278"

__ Solutions __
There are many ways you can help the environment but the one way we will be talking about is recycling. The national recycling rate has only increased slightly since 2000. We need this rate to go up substantially because the environment is being hurt by so many people not recycling. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is helping to increase the rate of recycling around the world. They are trying to make recycling more convenient and easy for residents.EPA is offering financial incentives for recycling,conducting public education and out reach. EPA also wants to reach the goal of recycling of solid waste to 35% by 2011. WasteWise is helping to increase recycling.

__** The History of Recycling **__ It all started in the 1940's and 1950's when landfills came around. Piles and piles off garbage came pouring in and some things decomposed almost right away. Other things took a little while to decompose and some never decomposed at all. They eventually figured out that certain items such as plastic bottles will take thousands of years to decompose. They were trying to figure out a solution so that the landfills didn't overflow when someone realized that they could reuse these items. The first real recycling plant opened in the early 1970's. Ever since then, recycling plants have opened up all across the globe.

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__** What would happen if we didnt recycle? **__ If we didnt recycle our world could turn into one big dump. Our landfills will get filled with all the recyclables. They will get filled with the things such as the papers, plastics and glass. Some of these things don't decompose for a thousand years! These landfills will also grow and grow as they get more filled. Our world will also become more polluted and make more animals become endangered. One other effect would be it would increase global warming. __** What can you Recycle? **__

You can recycle many different things. Some things you can recycle are tires, plastics, paper, cardboard, glass, aluminum and cellphones. There are many different types of plastics and papers that you can recycle. In the plastics you can recycle plastic cups, milk cartons, water bottles, soda bottles, milk jugs and many more things. In the papers you can recycle paper plates, paper cups, newspaper, advertisments and any other paper junk laying around your home! In every town your garbage man comes around and picks up your garbage. The garbage man can also collect your recycling if you know the right days to put it out. If you dont know the days be sure to call your town to find out! The recycling process begins when someone puts a recyclable item in a recycling bin. When the bin is full, the bin is emptied out and taken to a recycling center by a Waste Management truck. When the truck reaches the recycling center, it is then weighed and brought into the building. Once it is inside, it unloads the recyclable items and goes back out to pick up more recyclable items. Once the items are in the building, they are loaded onto a conveyor belt. Once they are on the conveyor belt, they are sorted onto other conveyor belts. Workers stand by these conveyor belts all day and take items off of it that cannot be recycled and throw them away. The recyclable items remain on the conveyor belt and are sorted by size or by type of recyclable item. The process finally ends when all of the items are taken to a compressor and compressed into cubes. These cubes are then sold to various types of companies so that they can use them to make new products. media type="custom" key="7978346" Sources - Garbage & Recycling 2009 -GAO Reports:1/29/2007 -Google Images -Flamingtext.com
 * __The Recycling Process__**