5. The truth about recycling (2200 р.С.)

Environment: As the importance of recycling becomes more apparent, questions about it linger. Is it worth the effort? How does it work?

A brief history of recycling.

Recycling has been appreci ated for centuries. For thousands of years metal items have been recycled by melt ing and reforming them into new weapons or tools.

During the industrial revolution, recyclers began to form businesses and later trade associations, dealing in the collection, trade and processing

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of metals and paper. In the 1930s many people survived the Great Depres sion by peddling scraps of metal, rags and other items. In those days reuse and recy cling were often economic necessities. Re cycling also played an important role during the Second World War, when scrap metal was turned into weapons.

As industrial societies began to pro duce ever-growing quantities of garbage, recycling took on a new meaning. Rather than recycling materials for purely econ omic reasons, communities began to think about how to reduce the waste flow.

Now there is an awful lot of rubbish. Since i960 the amount of municipal waste being collected in America has nearly tripled, reaching 245m tonnes in 2005. According to European Union statistics, the amount of municipal waste produced in Western Europe increased by 23% between 1995 and 2003, to reach 577kg per person. As the volume of waste has increased, so have recycling efforts. In 1980 America recycled only 9.6% of its municipal rubbish; today the rate stands at 32%. A similar trend can be seen in Europe, where some countries, such as Austria and the Netherlands, now recycle 60% or more of their munici­pal waste. Britain’s recycling rate, at 27%, is low, but it is improving fast, having nearly doubled in the past three years. When a city introduces new recycling programme, we may doubt about whether the collection and transportation of waste ma terials requires more energy than it saves. We are constantly being asked: Is recycling beneficial?

The researchers looked at more than 200 scenarios, comparing the impact of recy cling with that of burying or burning par ticular types of waste material. They found that in 83% of all scenarios that in cluded recycling, it was indeed better for the environment.

Britain’s recycling efforts reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions by 10m – 15m tonnes per year. That is equivalent to a 10% reduction in Britain’s annual carbon-dioxide emissions from transport, or equivalent to taking 3.5m cars off the roads. Similarly, America’s Environ mental Protection Agency estimates that recycling reduced the country’s carbon emissions by 49m tonnes in 2005.

Recycling has many other benefits, too. It conserves natural resources. It also reduces the amount of waste that is bu ried or burnt, hardly ideal ways to get rid of the stuff.

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But perhaps the most valuable benefit of recycling is the saving in energy and the reduction in greenhouse gases and pollu tion that result when scrap materials are substituted for virgin feedstock. If you can use recycled materials, you don’t have to mine ores, cut trees and drill for oil. Extracting metals from ore, in particu lar, is extremely energy-intensive. Recy cling aluminium, for example, can reduce energy consumption by as much as 95%. Recycling also reduces emissions of pollutants that can cause smog, acid rain and the contamination of waterways.

Notes:

recycling — вторичное использование rubbish, waste, garbage —

it is worth — это стоит отходы

to linger — затягиваться to triple — утроить

to deal — иметь дело emission — выделение

to process — обрабатывать carbon-dioxide — двуокись

to peddle — торговать в разнос углерода

greenhouse gas — парниковый impact — воздействие

эффект to get rid of — избавляться