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Why do people recycle?
People recycle for various different reasons. Some believe that it will help save the environment, whilst others believe it will reduce costs, and some people believe that if they recycle, then the earth will be a cleaner place. Also, many people recycle so that new, useful things are made out of useless waste, and therefore resources are more sustainable. In some places, recycling is very easy, and so people can recycle more readily and with less effort.
People believe that materials are wasted if they are just going to be burnt in the end at landfills (also causing pollution in the atmosphere). The image on the left represents the percentage of each material that is thrown away in the UK. These materials could be recycled and used to make a variety of different products.
Why don’t some people recycle?
As I mentioned before, 40% of people who know the benefits of recycling, still don’t recycle. This is because many people are against recycling and believe that the negatives of recycling outweigh the benefits of recycling. On the other hand, many people are not able to recycle as recycle programs are not available in the area they are living. Also, like I mentioned before 9 out of 10 people would recycle if made easier to do so. So, many people believe that recycling takes a lot of effort and isn’t worth the energy. Another reason is because some people do not have enough space in their homes to have separate bins for recycling, especially if they need to have different bins for plastic, glass and aluminium etc. Additionally, some people don’t recycle simply because they aren’t informed about recycling- they don’t know how it works and what the benefits may be.
Disadvantages of recycling are that there is a high cost of the collection of the material and also the treatment of it, and also, there is high energy costs involved in reprocessing. Furthermore, recycling can cause a lot of pollution as a lot of transport is required to move the recycled items from place to place (Taking to a recycled centre that can be miles away and then separated and taken to different recycling plants, depending on the material). So some people argue that recycling is bad for the environment. Although, recycling is said to reduce the amount of trees being chopped down, many people believe that it doesn’t make a difference. This is thought to be because the places where the recycling plants are built had to be cleared of trees and plants, and therefore trees are being cut down anyway, and recycling is thought to be pointless in helping save trees and other plants.
What is the process of recycling?
- Collecting recyclable materials from areas is the first step in the recycling process. In order for the materials to be taken for recycling, it must be put inside a special recycling box with the recycling symbol. So that it is clear what is to be recycled and not thrown away with other waste (waste which goes into landfills).
- The second step in the recycling process is sorting out the materials into each material (such as paper with paper and glass with glass). Each material group will then be sold to manufacturers- who will then turn these materials into new products.
- The third step of the recycling process is manufacturing of the product. A lot of products today are part or fully made out of recycled materials. Whether its clothes or newspapers and plastic bottles or paper towels.
- Finally, the last step of the recycling process is the final selling to customers. Customers have a choice whether to buy recycled materials or not, and recycled materials are clearly labelled that they are.
Method
I conducted a questionnaire in my town called ‘Bradley Stoke’, to find out people’s views on recycling and how they think the services are. I asked 10 people the questionnaire.
What I want to get out of this questionnaire, is how the people of Bradley Stoke’s awareness is regarding recycling and the benefits and disadvantages of the process. Following the results, I will draw conclusions about their recycling habits.
The Questionnaire:
Do you recycle?
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Yes 2. Yes 3. Yes 4. Yes 5. Yes 6. No 7. Yes 8. Yes 9. No 10. Yes
What do you recycle?
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Cardboard, paper, glass 2. Bottles, paper, food 3. Paper, food, aluminium 4. Bottles 5. Paper and cardboard 6.- 7. Paper and glass 8. Paper 9. - 10. Paper and cardboard
Do you have a local recycling bank?
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Yes 2. Yes 3. Yes 4. Yes 5. Yes 6. Yes 7. No 8. Yes 9. Yes 10. No
What can your area do to improve its recycling services?
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Recycle more often 2. Recycle More often- food waste 3. Increase awareness 4. Recycle more often 5. Teach more at school 6. Make it easier 7. Have more recycling banks 8. Recycle more often 9. Recycling trucks should collect more often 10. Recycle more often
Do you think recycling is good?
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Yes 2. Yes 3. Yes 4. Yes 5. I don’t know 6. Yes 7. No 8. Yes 9. No 10. Maybe
If yes, why is it good? If no, why is it bad?
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Good for the environment 2. Good for the environment 3. Good for the environment 4. Saves money 5. I’m not sure 6. Saves trees 7. Waste of time and money 8. Saves natural resources 9. Waste of money and time 10. There are positives and negatives
What can Bradley Stoke do to increase awareness and encourage recycling?
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Teach in schools 2. Teach in schools 3. Have community events about recycling 4. Increase amount of recycling banks 5. I don’t know 6. Sell more recyclable items 7. Teach in school 8. Post leaflets through door 9. Sell more recyclable items 10. I don’t know
Are there any disadvantages of recycling? If yes, what?
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Yes, costs a lot of money 2. Yes, unhygienic 3. Yes, Costs a lot of money 4. Yes, takes a long time 5. I don’t know 6. Yes, still causes pollution 7. Yes, Complicated process 8. Yes, costs a lot of money 9.Yes, makes pollution 10. Yes, costs a lot of money
How often do you recycle?
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Once a week 2. Once a week 3. Two times a week 4. Once a week 5. I don’t know 6. Never 7. Three times a week 8. I don’t know 9. Never 10. I don’t know
Do you recycle?
I asked 10 people the question ‘ do you recycle?’, and as the graph above shows, 80% of the 10 people asked recycled (8 people) and 20% of the 10 people didn’t (2 people). This graph shows that my results suggest that the majority of people recycle. However, that may not be true (explained in depth during the evaluation).
Do you have a local recycling bank?
My results show that 80% of the people asked do have a recycling bank whereas 20% do not. This result shows that the environment is being well kept and reserved by the government however, the 20% suggests room for improvement for areas with no recycling banks. However, the 20% (2 people) may not actually know where the recycling bank is, rather than it being a fault of the local environmental council, therefore a governmental leafleting system could be put in place to raise awareness of the recycling banks and being environmentally friendly in general.
Do you think recycling is good?
The graph above shows that 60% of people asked if they though recycling was good said yes (6 people), 20% said no (2 people), 10% said I don’t know (1 person) and 10% said maybe (1 person). The graph above suggests that more people are certain that recycling is good than it is bad, and some people aren’t certain, whether it’s because they aren’t aware of what recycling is and the benefits and negatives, or whether they don’t know if there are more positives than negatives. On the other hand, these results cannot determine the results of the whole nation, but we can predict the responses.
What can your area do to improve its recycling services?
The table above shows the responses I got from the 10 people when asked the question ‘what can your area do to improve its recycling services’. The most common answer received was ‘Recycle more often’. This answer can imply that it is the people’s responsibility to recycle and that people aren’t recycling enough but are willing to do so. The other responses such as ‘make it easier’ and ‘have more recycling banks’ suggest that it is the fault of the local environmental council and that it is their responsibility to encourage people to recycle, by making it more easier and common in the area. Linking it to the answer ‘recycle more often’ both answers advocate that some people want to recycle, but are not able to do so as recycling is not readily available and that also ‘recycling trucks should collect more often.
Evaluation & Conclusion
I believe that a questionnaire was the best possible way I could research recycling in my local area. This is because I could then gather opinions from the people who live in Bradley Stoke, who are the people who do the recycling. By carrying out a questionnaire, it enabled me to have a further understanding of what people already know about recycling and whether it is a good or bad thing. It allowed me to be able to draw conclusions about how the local council is providing for Bradley Stoke’s recycling needs and what people believe should be improved and how it can be improved.
The method of investigation used is hard to judge by ‘reliability’ and ‘validity’. This is because unless the questions didn’t reflect the subject of reliability and taken people’s opinions, a questionnaire cannot really be incorrect. For reliability I couldn’t have repeated the same questionnaire on each person, as the aim of the questionnaire was to gather their personal views on recycling and what they do presently. However, a way to be reliable was picking out an anomaly during the responses given and describing the reason why that person had that certain view on recycling.
The important thing when doing a questionnaire is by keeping it valid. I kept the questionnaire valid by only having one variable; the one variable was the person who was asked. I asked each person the same question, and didn’t add change the questionnaire at all. This made it easier for me to compare the responses and draw to conclusions.
A way I could extend my research is by asking more people the questionnaire, as this would make the final result of all the responses more dependable and I would have a clearer understanding of the views of people in Bradley Stoke. My graph showed that 6 out of the 10 people recycled, on the other hand, although my graph suggests that 60% of people recycle, it isn’t very accurate. I know this because 35% of the world’s population do not. The more people I ask, the more accurate the result. Also, the method wasn’t completely fair. This is because the people I asked were the same age, so I didn’t have a wide variety of different people taking the questionnaire. Age is an important factor because hypothetically, teenagers (14, 15 years of age) wouldn’t be responsible for the recycling in their homes (maybe a parent/guardian would be) and therefore would have a lesser knowledge of recycling and what they recycle and how often. Another way I could extend my research is by asking a group of people one age the questionnaire and asking the same amount of people in another age the same questionnaire and compare the responses and see whether people of different ages have different views on recycling and why. Additionally, a further way I could extend my research is by asking people who recycle the questionnaire and asking the same amount of people who don’t recycle- the same questionnaire. This would allow me to get a better view on why some people recycle and why some people don’t, and what would make a better service for recycling.
One thing I would do to improve the questionnaire is by asking more questions that would get a larger variety of responses. For instance, I could have asked the question ‘would you like to know more about recycling?’ This question is good because then I would have an idea regarding who is interested about recycling and who isn’t, and that would evidently show the reasons why some people recycle and some don’t.
With reference to the results of the questionnaire and other research that I have done, I conclude that in my opinion, recycling has more benefits than negatives in the long term.
I have come to this conclusion due to the fact that we are helping the environment and saving resources. 6 out of the 10 people questioned believed that recycling was a good thing, 1 person said ‘maybe’, 1 person said ‘I don’t know’ and only 2 people were certain that it isn’t. Like I had written previously, this result suggests that the majority of people think that recycling is good, but the results cannot be generalised to what the whole nation thinks, as it might just be the people that were asked. 8 out of 10 people asked if they recycled, did recycle, and if only 6 people were confident that recycling was a good thing, then some people must recycle, even though they are unaware of the benefits and negatives, just because of a large amount of people locally recycling and maybe they are assuming that it is a good thing to do.
I believe that saving the earth’s natural resources is a very good thing to do, and we should always try to do what’s best for the environment if and when we are given the choice. Furthermore, recycling reduces the amount of landfills, that cause pollution and contaminates areas and things (rivers, wells, seafood etc) .One person’s response to how Bradley Stoke can improve its recycling services was to make it easier to do so and another response was to increase amounts of recycling banks. So I believe that if recycling is more readily available and easier to do, more people would recycle. Another example is that someone who didn’t recycle said they didn’t have a local recycling bank, and a way to improve recycling services was to have more recycling banks. Also, they believed that recycling is a complicated process. So if recycling is made easier, there is a possibility that they would recycle.
Personally, I believe that the only major disadvantage of recycling is the cost involved in the process. 4 out of the 10 people I asked agree with me that a disadvantage of recycling is that it ‘costs a lot of money’. Also, apparently recycled products are more expensive than new products. So people are encouraged to buy the same product, but a cheaper version. So unless costs go down, then recycling will be seen as something more beneficial for not only the environment, but for money saving.
One person questioned, believed that in order for Bradley Stoke to improve its recycling service was to increase awareness and another person said to teach it more at school. I agree with both of these answers because increasing awareness and letting people know from an early age about the benefits of recycling will encourage them to do so in the present and the future. Increasing awareness is good because, as the costs of the process of recycling is high, then people need to be persuaded that the benefits are more overpowering than the negatives.
Finally, I would like to clarify that before I had to do research about recycling, I was more unaware of the benefits and also the negatives of recycling, and I didn’t have a deep understanding of landfills and how they are bad towards the environment. But still, taking into account the negatives that I have learnt through my research and the positives of recycling, I still think it is a more beneficial thing to do. Until there is increased awareness, many people will be uninformed by means of why people should recycle.
Bibliography
- percentage of people who recycle, facts and benefits
- percentage of people who recycle in the world
- Recycling interesting facts
- what recycling is?
- about waste and recycling- statistics
- how recycling is good for the environment
- what landfills are?
- about landfill gas
- about methane
- about methane
- definition of contamination
- things that can be recycled
- why people recycle
- what is available for collection with South Gloucestershire Council?
- why people recycle
- why people should recycle
- why some people don’t recycle
-disadvantages of recycling
- the process of recycling
– recycled products not cheaper?
- definition of a chemical reaction
- definition of a microbe
- definition of pollution
- definition of a greenhouse gas
- definition of reforestation
- definition of biodiversity
– definition of atmosphere
Glossary
Atmosphere- ‘A particular environment or surrounding influence’ (definition from Google).
Biodiversity- The variation of animal life and plant in a particular habitat, or in the world (Overall).
Chemical reactions- A process that leads to the change of one chemical substance to another.
Contamination- When unwanted substances mix with materials.
Greenhouse gas- ‘A gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation’ (definition from Google).
Landfill- A site for waste disposal by burial.
Microbes - organisms that are microscopic (too small to be seen by the human eye).
Pollution- unwanted condition of the natural environment being contaminated as a result of human activities.
Recycling- Converting waste products into new materials, such as recycling old newspapers to make new paper.
Reforestation- The replanting of a forest that has been reduced by cutting or a forest fire.