RECYCLING should be everybody’s business to help sustain the environment for ourselves and generations to come.
While reasons as to the importance of recycling should be obvious, often, facts come in handy to emphasise the point of why.
For instance, did you know that a milk cartoon takes about five years to break down and over double that for a cigarette butt? And that just one recycled plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60W light bulb for six hours?
According to the general manager of Amanzimtoti-based recycling company Social Waste Management SA, Jean-Claude Matthysen, everything in nature serves a purpose which allows for the process of bio degradation to take place.
“If we look at the goods we purchase from stores, the packaging is man-made, meaning it does not come from our natural eco-system. It has been extracted and modified from our natural and non-renewable resources in factories, therefore we cannot expect our natural eco system to break down the packaging and products,” said Jean-Claude.
He said such products need recycling interventions and to be returned back to the factories to complete the circular system.
“The majority of our products are packed in plastic these days. Plastic is manufactured from oil, a fossil fuel that is non-renewable.
“If we don’t recycle that plastic, it has a catastrophic threat to our natural eco-system, because plastic never breaks down completely, but into micro beads.”
Reasons to recycle include creating a clean and sustainable circular system, prevent the flow of plastic and other valuable resources into landfills, roads, water systems and oceans and also saves time, energy and resources in sorting and processing.
Another way of ensuring that waste is kept minimal is through up-cycling, where waste is reused and re-purposed rather than material being processed for recycling.
“One of the most common examples of up-cycling is using your ice-cream container as a lunch box. You could also create a food garden from used containers such as plastic bottles or crates. Glass jars can be up-cycled into fairly light containers, storage for spices, pickled products and jams,” said Jean-Claude.
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