Shelby Deakins-Phelps

Econ 1010

Recycling benefits and costs

Recycling is an economic development tool as well as an environmental

tool. Reuse, recycling, and waste reduction offer direct development
opportunities for communities. When collected with skill and care, and upgraded
with quality in mind, discarded materials are a local resource that can contribute
to local revenue, job creation, business expansion, and the local economic
base. (Institute for Local Self-Reliance )Recycling programs in the United States
are a big element of waste management. There are environmental and economic
benefits associated with recycling. Recycling helps create jobs, can be more cost
effective than trash collection, reduces the need for new landfills, saves energy,
supplies valuable raw materials to industry, and adds to the U.S. economy. The
following is about recycling and how it relates to people lives, their employment,
their community, and the economy.
Recycling is great for the economy because of the amount of job
opportunities it creates. Recycling creates many jobs such as new businesses

that collect, process, and broker recovered materials, as well as companies that
manufacture and distribute products made with these recycled materials. The
recycling and reuse industry consists of approximately 56,000 establishments
that employ over 1.1 million people, generate an annual payroll of nearly $37
billion, and gross over $236 billion in annual revenues. Unlike the waste
management industry, recycling adds value to materials, contributing to a
growing labor force including materials sorters, dispatchers, truck drivers,
brokers, sales representatives, process engineers, and chemists. (Enviromental
Protection Agency)
When a recycled material, rather than a raw material, is used to make a
new product, natural resources and energy are conserved. This is because
recycled materials have already been refined and processed once;
manufacturing the second time is much cleaner and less energy-intensive than
the first. Recycling revenues can help defray recycling costs and forestall the
need for new disposal capacity, as every cubic yard of material recycled is one
less cubic yard of landfill space that is required. These avoided costs are part of
the revenues that recycling brings to a community. For example, in 1996, Ann
Arbor, Michigan, spent $71 per ton on recycling and composting, compared to

$86 per ton for trash collection and disposal. For example in 1996, 130 million
cubic yards of material were diverted from landfills due to recycling and
composting. If this amount of material had not been recycled, the U.S. would
have needed 64 additional landfills, each with enough capacity to serve the
combined city populations of Dallas and Detroit. (Enviromental Protection
Agency)
In addition to creating more jobs and greater economic activity at the local
level, recycling generates $200 million per year in sales tax revenue. These
funds help local governments pay for health and social services programs,
transportation improvements, and public safety. (Lloyd and Marin) By Recycling
we are able to use the funds produced to do good things for the states and use it
towards recourses to bettering our communities.
I chose the topic of recycling because in my home recycling is something
we do regularly. About ten years ago I decided to start recycling soda cans
because my family was just throwing them away and I thought it would be a good
thing to do instead of just throwing them in the trash. Ten years later we recycle
a lot more then just soda cans, we have a paper bin, an aluminum bin, and a
plastic bin. As a family we have now gotten other people in our neighborhood
involved and recycling as well. For a long time we did not have a recycling
system set up in our area so we would have to take our recyclables to the recycle

plant but now Farmington has a recycle collection that is set up similar to the
trash pick up which makes it much easier to recycle. It has been a nice change to
see all of the recycle bins that get put out on the street on a weekly basis . I did
not get the city to participate in recycling but I always loved going to my
neighbors to pick up their recyclable materials and taking them to be recycled . It
wasnt much but it always made me feel like I was giving back a little bit.

By changing something as simple as putting cans, plastic, and paper into

recycling bins we can do so much for our economy. Recycling can better our
environment and our economy by creating jobs, it can be more cost effective
than trash collection, it reduces the need for new landfills, saves energy,
supplies valuable raw materials to industry, and adds to the U.S. economy.

Works Cited
Enviromental Protection Agency. Communication the Benefits of Recycling . 15 04 2013. 2014
<http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/tools/localgov/benefits/>.
Institute for Local Self-Reliance . Recycling Means Business. 01 February 2002. 2014
<http://ilsr.org/recycling-means-business/>.
Lloyd, Alan C and Rosario Marin. Good for the Enviroment Good for the Economy. 2004. 2014
<http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/Publications/Documents/Economics%5C41004002.pdf>.