What Not Recycling Will Do To You

10. Higher fuel prices. Producing more aluminum, textiles, plastic, paper, and other brand new materials from scratch will consume far more energy than salvaging and reusing old materials. The more brand new products that must be created, the more energy used. The more energy used, less fuel is available. Less fuel, higher price.

9. Your children! Do you really want to leave this whole mess for your children to fix? Do your part now and make it easier on future generations.

8. More work and more consumer debt. The higher fuel costs rise, the more everyone will have to work to catch up with rising fuel costs. The only alternative would be to fall into debt.

7. Contaminated drinking water. Throwing away toxic materials like paint, batteries, CFL bulbs, and chemicals will inevitably find their way back into the groundwater. Public water plants can't filter out everything, not to mention it affects wildlife, too.

6. The world becomes a giant dump. Landfills everywhere, garbage smell all over the place. The earth is only so big, where are you going to put all of this garbage? The only solution is to reuse things you've used before and to not use as much stuff.

5. It's less expensive than throwing it away. Dumpsters cost money, and so does trash pickup. Recycling is free.

4. More jobs. Recycling creates far more opportunities for employment than landfills and incinerators. More jobs will stimulate the economy and lower prices of goods.

3. It kills wildlife. Creating more waste not only takes up more space that wildlife use, but they use it as a feeding ground. Animals don't know any better than to scavenge off of our food scraps and waste, and can't diffrentiate between safe and unsafe food. There are also a number of harmful contaminants and materials in landfills that will easily kill or trap animals, like fishing line, nets, and plastic can rings (the kind that are on six pack containers to hold them together).

2. Cleaner air. Creating virgin products instead of recycling in most cases uses much more energy, and creates unhealthy emissions. Continued emissions leads to unhealthy living conditions and smog.

1. This is one point that everyone will understand: money. Creating brand new packaging, metals, plastics, paper and other materials on the average uses far more energy than recycling previously used materials. Use this as your arguing point if some stubborn people don't want to see it your way. Most people will understand when you mention the money and economic factor. A good example is aluminum. As opposed to creating new aluminum, recycling old aluminum uses 95% less energy.