I read this article while I was at the gym today and was very impressed by the advances that have been made in recycling in recent years. While you often hear that it is inefficient to recycle and that it is actually worse for the environment than not recycling, this study by the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste refutes these claims by looking at an array of 55 life-cycle analyses and 200 scenarios to compare recycling with other disposal methods. They found that in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment.
This article also explains how recyclables are sorted when they are all in the same bin and how aluminum is plucked out of the stream of trash despite it’s non-magnetivity. I always wondered about that (click on “read more” at the bottom to find out the secret).
I was thinking about the environment before I went to the gym because Monday is Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers around the world have pledged to write about the environment. Now I have to think of another topic for Monday because I couldn’t wait to post this one…
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