Five Benefits Of Recycling Bottles And Other Beverage Containers

7 October 2015
 Categories: , Blog

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Beverage containers make up a significant proportion of the waste that goes to landfills each year. Bringing bottles back to a recycling center or bottle return location has a number of benefits.

Return of Deposit

While it may not seem a lot, in many locations there is a deposit of anywhere from 5 cents to 40 cents each time you purchase a beverage in a recyclable container. Return the container to the appropriate location, and you'll get some or all of this deposit back again. For those who drink a lot of these beverages, this can really add up to a significant amount of money over time.

Potential Fundraising Activity

Not everyone is willing to go and return these bottles and containers themselves, but organizations or individuals can set up a bottle and can drive to collect these containers and return them in exchange for the deposits. It can be a lot easier to ask people to save their containers for you to collect than to get them to give you cash.

Better for the Environment

Returning these containers helps keep them out of the landfill and limits the amount of new resources that need to be used. These containers are recycled into new beverage containers or other items, such as license plates, fleece jackets, carpeting, insulation and even baseball bats. Bottle return programs offer a way for more materials to be recycled even in areas where curbside recycling or other recycling programs aren't widely available. As the population grows, the space available for landfills is becoming more and more limited. If recyclable materials aren't recycled, the landfills will fill up that much quicker and new solutions will be required to figure out what to do with all the trash produced by the increasing population.

Limits Litter

Beverage containers are one of the items that often make up litter. However, when a bottle deposit is at stake, people are less likely to throw these items on the ground and more likely to recycle them, limiting the amount of litter that needs to be cleaned up alongside roads and in public places.

Provides Employment

The whole recycling system, including the bottle return system, needs people to keep it running. These people help sort out the recycled containers and send them to the appropriate recycling plants and staff these plants. The more items that are recycled, the more people are provided with jobs to keep the process moving smoothly.

For more information, contact a bottle return company like Sur-Del Bottle Depot.