A Benefit to Neighborhoods

Everyone has heard about the need for recycling, but the decisions to do so always seem to be an individual matter. There are however many beneficial aspects to recycling. Some of them help out the community.

Recycling is now a big business that provides many jobs. This goes well beyond just the numbers of people employed by municipalities to pick up the recycling bins that people put in front of their dwellings every week. According to the latest figures from the Department of Labor, there are now over 3 million jobs in the U.S. that are classified in categories that can be labeled green. Many of these are centered on community efforts devoted to recycling.

People work in the recycling centers. Others work to bring materials to the recycling center. There more jobs as the recyclables move on down the line to be remade or renewed. All these phases of the recycling effort put people to work in gainful employment.

There is a lot of worth in the materials that are recycled. Neighborhood groups involved in such work can bring money into an area that might be in need of just such cash infusions. Often nonprofit groups lead recycling drives in order to raise funds for their work.

Saving Money a Goal

Recycling can not only earn community money, it can save it from spending as well. Landfills are expensive to operate and hard to replace when filled. By recycling, less will go in the landfill, and it can stay open longer. This is an important consideration given the fact that the siting of landfills is generally a controversial issue for most neighborhoods. Few people want to live

near one. For communities that have little open area close by, this becomes a real problem.

The most comprehensive form of recycling that neighborhoods engage in is curbside pickups by garbage trucks. A trash can will usually be designated for this, often colored green to denote the beneficial aspects to the environment that the program symbolizes. The proceeds derived from selling the recycled materials can be used to underwrite the effort.

The effort required to make a recycling program work can help to pull a community together. This tends to be a labor intensive field meaning that it requires many hands to do the work. With

people working together in this way, a community can gain a feeling of solidarity that can carry over to how the community feels about itself. If that sense is of a neighborhood working together for a common good, a sense of civic pride will be at hand.

Since recycling products almost always take less energy than making new ones from scratch, there will be less fuel consumed in the process. This will lessen the pollutants entering the atmosphere making the air cleaner and more breathable. It will also lower the amount of greenhouses gases produced thereby lessening the concern that global warming would otherwise present.