The Importance of Recycling

When I'm not out protesting, I enjoy recycling.

This is simply my recycling from the last two weeks.  You'll notice it really adds up.

Please IGNORE the labels, this is NOT an advertisement (Things might be different if it was Surge).

I was sorting recycling lastnight/thismorning and I thought taking a picture of this could illustrate to some people how fast you can accumulate aluminum.  I didn't count the can's but there is at least 160 in the stack.  Where I live aluminum is at .50 cents a pound.  There are approximately 32 aluminum cans in a pound.   If there are 160 cans in this stack then there is around 5 pounds of aluminum.  And of course 5 pounds of aluminum is $2.50  Now of course that doesn't sound like that much money, but lets take into account the fact that I purchased only a couple of the cans here, and would have purchased regardless of monetary return.  $2.50 every 2 weeks ends up being about $60 a year.  Even better than this is if you were to save this money and invest it.  If you invested this extra money each year and got back 7% the figures would look like this.  (Of course be aware the price for aluminum fluctuates so it can be much lower or higher depending on the scarcity, as well as factoring in gas money if the drop off center isn't on your way to another location [you can always walk :)]).

5 Years: 345.04

10 Years: 828.99

20 Years: 2,459.73

30 Years: 5,667.65

40 Years: 11,978.11

50 Years: 24,391.74

60 Years: 48,811.22

Kinda makes you think twice about just throwing that soda can away?  A least I hope it does.  It may take a long time to accumulate but there is good money to be made doing something helpful and easy.  Much more aluminum can be "harvested" per week as well through dumpster diving, picking up cans while going for a walk, contributions from friends and coworkers who don't recycle themselves, etc.    While I would recycle cans if it paid $0.00, It is a nice perk to encourage myself and others to do so.

Even better than sending something to be recycled is to re use it for something else.

I always save colorful energy drink tops to make into pins.

I've been saving these Energy Drink tops because I'm sure there's something cool I can use them for, and if not I'll simply recycle them.

These came from inside the Metal Lids, I'm sure there's a project that will call for them.

The Babe just wanted to sleep as usual, 7 am is too late for him!  Also please note this mess has absolutely no relevance to me or my recycling.

If you're interested in learning more about recycling I found This Video to be particularly interesting.

As well as this one:

If you enjoyed this article at all please check out my other ramblings, and tell your friends and your dad!