How much do Americans recycle - Facts

Several recent studies have confirmed that around one quarter of adult Americans do not bother to recycle.

The worst condition looks to be in South and Midwest where more than two thirds of people don't bother to recycle. Completely opposite are areas of East and West coast where close to 90% people recycle on daily basis.

RecycleBank program pays people with coupons to recycle in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.

The most recycled items in America are metal cans and aluminium, followed by plastic, paper, and glass.

Americans could recycle much more than they are doing today. The most common excuses for not recycling are that recycling is not available in their area, and that recycling would take too much of their effort, and some even say that recycling is connected with relatively high and unnecessary costs. More than 10% percent of Americans believe that recycling has no purpose because it will make no difference on global level.

Overall situation with recycling in US could definitely improve, but at least there is an ongoing positive trend which shows that more and more Americans are helping our environment with recycling.

Federal government, as well as state and local governments need to continue building ecological conscience of American society so people would care much more for our environment than they are doing today.

Recycling is something each and every one of us could do for our environment, an easy proof to Mother Nature that we still care.

Recycling of electronic waste - Main issues

Electronic waste from computers, cell phones, televisions, and different other electronic gadgets is piling up, with most of it ending up in China where it is shipped for recycling and for cottage industry that recovers reusable materials. The scientists have found that this recycling process is connected with significant health and environmental hazards as there are numerous toxic elements in the emissions coming from an electronic waste recycling workshops in China.

Chinese mostly use low-tech methods to separate reusable electronic components from the circuit boards. These methods are not connected with high costs but they do cause serious environmental and health damage. Scientists say that the most immediate problem connected with recycling of electronic waste is the health of the workers and the people who live in the city. The problems do not stop here because these harmful emissions from toxic materials can also lead to global contamination as some previous studies have found carcinogens in wind-carried dust from Asia.

This study was the result of combined work of scientists from US and China, and was published in the journal Atmospheric Environment. The area where they conducted this study was Shantou City, a town of 150,000 people located in southern China's Guangdong Province, and the samples were collected during four working days, when workers were removing the electronic components by heating the circuit boards over grills on stoves burning coal briquettes.

Scientists still do not know to what extent are these emissions harming the environment and creating a health hazard for the workers, and people living in the nearby areas, and this will be the next logical step in their research.

Recycling - Key to healthy environment

You don't have to be a brainiac to be aware of global environmental mess we created over the years. Pollution problems, toxic elements, greenhouse gases, deforestation, and different other ecological problems are making our environment unhealthy so we should definitely do something about it. The easiest thing you can do for our planet and the environment you live in is recycling.