Reduce, Reuse, Recycle; How to Properly Sort Recyclables?

The General Assembly kicked off with a sobering speech about the climate crisis and sweltering weather spawning diseases. Developed countries were called on to reach net-zero emissions by 2040 and to phase out fossil fuel emissions. Additionally, they were urged to help low and middle-income countries transition to clean energy and invest in climate resilience measures to cope with extreme weather events.

So, what can we do as normal citizens? According to the EPA, plastics are behind 232 million tons of emissions, which is a similar amount to what 50 million cars emit. Shockingly, 50% of recyclables are thrown into trash cans, as mentioned by one of the NGOs. This is inevitable as the recycling industry constantly changes, and its regulations differ from country to country and region to region. 

Here are some rules you can follow; the scrunching test and the flipping test. First, when you scrunch a piece of trash, if it stays scrunched, it’s recyclable. Second, if trash is contaminated by something like food residue, you need to rinse it, and then flip it. If anything comes out, it can't be recycled. Lastly, contaminated waste and electrical equipment could contaminate the whole recycling system and cause blockages.

*Vocabularies; behind, swelter, net zero, phase out, resilience, NGO, recyclable, residue, blockage, differ, playwright

REFERENCE