8 Ways Recycling Can Help the Planet

You can find recycling bins in people’s homes all across the world. We’ve all been taught the importance of recycling our glass, plastic, and paper materials when we can. Recycling these single-use items is commonplace, but it’s not all we should be doing. Everyone should make an effort to ensure all of their possessions get reused and recycled responsibly. Things like clothing or furniture should be donated when possible to prevent unnecessary waste, but our tech products also need to be recycled when they aren’t useful to use anymore.

E-waste is a huge problem, but it’s something we can all work on to improve. Recycling can help the whole planet in multiple ways, from keeping people safe to conserving resources. Learn more about the ways recycling can help the planet.

1. Prevent Toxic Waste

Many don’t realize how harmful their electronic devices can become. These devices are safe to use while they’re properly maintained, but this stops when they’re thrown away in landfills. When devices are exposed to the elements, they can become extremely toxic. Devices can seep toxic waste into the soil, affecting nearby crops, and once it’s in the soil, it will eventually make its way to water sources. Tech recycling prevents this toxic waste from occurring.

2. Conserve Natural Resources

We may not think about what’s in our tech products. However, most of our everyday devices contain precious metals, like gold and copper, and other natural resources. These elements are in limited supply and are nonrenewable. Once these resources are gone, we can’t create more, so we can’t afford to be wasteful. Throwing away electronics means throwing away natural resources that could have been reused for new products.

3. Reduce Landfills

A huge amount of e-waste is produced every year. It can be difficult to think about the amount of technology disposed of worldwide, but it can be around 50 million tons each year. When this ends up in landfills, it requires a large amount of physical space. If we continue to throw away electronics at such a high volume, we’ll end up needing more and more landfills. By recycling, we can prevent more landfills from being created. David Meltzer the owner of East Insurance Group put this into perspective for us. “Now imagine, if every single person did their part and practiced proper recycling methods, the Earth can at the very least slow down the process in a significant way.”

4. Reuse Materials

Plenty of the materials in your devices can be reused. This includes the precious metals in them and materials we already recycle regularly, like glass and plastic. These materials can all be reused, so there’s no reason to source or create new ones. You can easily help the planet by ensuring the materials you already have are reused once you’re no longer using them.

5. Protect Human Lives

E-waste is typically shipped out to third-world and developing countries, or countries where extremely cheap labor is found. Landfills put the people in these communities at a huge risk. Toxic waste from devices can contaminate their water and food sources, potentially causing serious health problems. Workers at the landfills who get paid low rates are also at serious risk when they’re forced to breathe in toxic fumes from this waste. We should all be doing what we can to protect other people’s health and safety, which means recycling electronics.

6. Create New Jobs

Recycling old devices isn’t an easy task. To make e-waste recycling the norm, many skilled workers are going to be needed. This can help create new jobs all over and provide many with exciting opportunities to improve what happens to our old devices. With more jobs being created to make e-waste recycling possible, many people will be positively impacted by this change.

7. Save Energy By Reusing

Creating new technology from scratch requires a lot of energy. If people aren’t aware that they should be recycling electronics, they might think there’s no choice but to create entirely new devices with new materials. E-waste recycling means this isn’t necessary. With access to recycled electronics, less energy will be required to create new devices.

8. Help the Environment

By reducing the amount of harmful waste in the world and reducing the amount of energy and resources needed to create new electronic devices, we can significantly help the environment. E-waste has already negatively impacted the world, and as electronic devices become more prevalent, the problem will continue to grow. Not only do soil and water face the negative effects of e-waste, but the air does as well. The damage done to our soil, water, and the atmosphere will affect people worldwide for generations. Melissa Rey with DRVN stresses the importance of recycling on helping the environment. “More than anything, I think recycling is a great way to begin one’s journey to sustainability. It serves as such a great stepping stone to begin minimizing your carbon footprint and can teach a lot about accountability and the difference one person can make with a little effort.”

Recycle Your Devices Responsibly

E-waste can have grave effects that will negatively impact us all, but we have the potential to mitigate it. With access to e-waste recycling programs, people can prevent the negative effects e-waste has on the entire planet. At Newtech Recycling, we give people a safe and responsible place to recycle their unwanted devices so they can do their part in keeping our planet protected.