Recycling Should Be Mandatory for Everyone Essay

Recycling Should Be Mandatory for Everyone - Essay Example Recycling is beneficial to the environment, is cost-effective and must be made mandatory in order to succeed. The environmental benefits of recycling are well-documented and beyond doubt. Recycling reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators, conserves natural resources such as timber, water, and minerals, prevents pollution by reducing the need to collect new raw materials, saves energy, reduces greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global climate change and helps create new well-paying jobs in the recycling and manufacturing industries in the United States (EPA). The common method of dealing with waste is landfilling. This method is an inefficient waste of resources: The EPA asserts that the largest single component of landfills is packaging material which is 100 percent recyclable. One out of every 100 pounds dumped in U.S. landfills consists of the highly recyclable junk mail. Landfills also contribute to global warming through the release of methane into the atmosphere and by the pollution of groundwater and waterways. Recycling is an efficient alternative to la ndfills. Contrary to popular perception, recycling is cost-effective. The major argument put forward by critics of recycling is that it is often comparatively more expensive than landfilling. This argument is highly misleading. As Edward Humes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author says, â€Å"You could similarly argue that paying to go to the dentist is always more expensive than not going. Or that we sure could have saved on the military if only we had surrendered after Pearl Harbor rather than declaring war.† Critics of recycling conveniently fail to take into consideration the long term financial costs of addressing the costs of pollution caused by landfilling.                 Ã‚