|
A Tale of Two Bottles: Where Does the Trash Go?
by Steve Denton
The following tale is a story suited for children but also offers a reminder for adults.
Have you ever thought about where your trash goes once it leaves your house? Or what happens to the things you place in the recycling bin? Here is a tale of two bottles:
Two bottles sat side-by-side in a home for some time. Eventually, their contents were used up, and, empty, their paths diverged. One was placed in the green recycling container and the other into the garbage can. The next day they were placed at the curb and picked up by the sanitation department.
The bottle in the recycling bin was taken to a large industrial plant, broken up into tiny pieces called cullet, then crushed, sorted, cleaned, and prepared to be mixed with raw material and melted into molten glass. It is easier and uses less energy to change cullet into new glass material to be made into a new bottle than to produce brand new raw glass material for a new bottle. This recycling process helps reduce air pollution by 20 percent and water pollution by 50 percent more.
The other bottle, which was tossed in the garbage can along with trash, dirty diapers, molding food scraps, and cigarette butts, was dumped into a larger pile of garbage called a landfill. Every so often the bottle will be jostled about by a big bulldozer, but mostly it will just lay there. It may lay in its spot for a million years, because it may take that long to biodegrade, or break down, from glass into the raw materials it was before it was a bottle.
|