index > Today's Earth, Our Future > 7. Let's not be wasteful > Creating a Recycling-Oriented Society
 
Creating a Recycling-Oriented SocietyAnother chapter on this Create your Future website, "There is No Waste in Nature," explains that nature does not make garbage. For example, the bones of a zebra might be treated as "garbage" by a lion but they become food for other living creatures, like worms and bacteria. Also, leaves that fall from trees might seem like the tree's "garbage," but in fact, they become food for the bacteria that live in the dirt and help enrich the soil. So, what might be seen as "garbage" for some is actually food for others. This process of waste that becomes food shows that nature is "cyclical." This means nature's cycles are repeated over and over again. (In this case, the cycle of "garbage" becoming food.) What will happen if we keep producing garbage that cannot be returned to the earth? It will eventually throw nature and our planet off-balance. In the end, the lives of all living creatures (including human beings, of course,) will be threatened, or to use another word, be "endangered." Wouldn't it be great if we could solve the garbage problem by copying nature and make use of our waste without throwing it out? We could recycle our garbage instead of dumping it into rivers and oceans. A society that makes efforts to recycle their waste is called a "recycling-oriented society." In such a society, waste from companies and factories is reused as raw material to make other products, and, if personal items, such as clothes or household appliances, are no longer needed, they are either used as is by someone else, or they are used for other purposes. If we continue handling our garbage in this way--keep passing the baton from one to another as we do in relay races--there won't be any more garbage and we won't have to dig new resources out from the earth. In a recycling-oriented society, both the problems of waste and the lack of resources can be solved at the same time. You may think this sounds too unrealistic, but in fact, the concept of garbage of one living being becoming another living being's food is completely natural--much more natural than the repeated cycle of throwing something out after it is used and then needing new resources! Nature's way is much more reasonable and economical. Waste, garbage, rubbish, etc. The general term we use for all of these is "emission," and therefore, when we say "zero emission," we mean "no garbage." One example of zero emission is heating swimming pools from heat made from garbage incinerators (the machines that turn our garbage into ashes to reduce the amount of land needed to dispose of our waste). The water can also be used for other purposes when the swimming pool is drained. In this way, we extend the use of our resources, and thus reduce our waste. Like the saying goes: "One person's garbage is another person's treasure," let's pass on what we don't need to others who can use it. You never know when your garbage could be useful in some other way, so "think before you throw out"!
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   7. Let's not be wasteful
   
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