I want you to picture 41,000 school buses. The weight of those buses is equal to that of the recyclable cans and bottles Americans throw away every year. Each can and bottle takes about 500 years to decompose, lasting long after our time. But did you know, if we had recycled those cans and bottles, they could have been reused in as little as six weeks? Recycling even one of these cans saves enough energy to listen to an entire album on your iPod. If you had recycled half of those cans, you would have created a new job. Recycling a can also saves two times more money than making new aluminum.

Recycling helps the economy in many different ways. Not only does it cost less to reuse aluminum, but it reduces a community’s disposal costs to recycle. Another way recycling benefits the economy is that it creates upwards of ten times more jobs than disposing of any recyclables. For every 10,000 tons of waste going to landfills, only one job is created. On the other hand, recycling 10,000 tons of that waste instead creates anywhere from 10 to 75 jobs.

Recycling also saves a lot of energy. As I mentioned before, recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to listen to one album of songs on your iPod. Recycling 100 of the same cans will power the lights in your bedroom for two weeks straight! When you think about it, recycling 100 cans isn’t really that difficult. If your school recycles, you probably recycle more than 100 cans every day! If your school or your work doesn’t recycle, I would strongly encourage you to! Not only are you helping your local economy, but you are also helping the national economy and planet Earth.

Recycling has been proven important time and time again. It helps economies, saves energy, and overall helps to improve our planet. For any and all of these reasons, we should start and continue to recycle. Recycling will create a healthier environment for us and for all generations to come.