The US alone creates 250 million tons of trash per year, which equates to 4.4 pounds of trash per person created per day. Globally, the number is far higher, exceeding 2.12 billion tons of waste being dumped into landfills every year. These numbers are staggering, and it is so important that every single one of us does our best to eliminate waste where we can and recycle more.
We are grateful for all that we have on this beautiful planet and want to show gratitude for everything Earth gives us. We do not want to be wasteful and contribute to the problems that trash creates. At Gratitude Gifted, we send all our gratitude gifts in packaging that has been created from recycled materials. The packages are all fully recyclable as well, which we believe is a part of our responsibility to help care for our beautiful Earth.
At Gratitude Gifted, we love living in harmony with our planet and feel it is our duty to do our part to make a difference. We wanted to create our packaging from recycled materials so we could create something new and beautiful from something that already existed. From there, we wanted the materials to be fully recyclable as well so that we could pass the torch to you in hopes that you could recycle them one day as well. There are many reasons why we should recycle, and we want to take a moment to share a few of them with you.
WHY RECYCLE
Recycling is an actionable thing we can do to show gratitude for our planet and all that it has for us. We know that a gratitude practice pairs our actions with our words to show appreciation, and recycling is a beautiful way we can show appreciation for resources we already have. We can all work together to protect and conserve our environment by recycling, and here are some of the benefits of recycling.
Recycling saves precious resources.
When we recycle, we are reducing the waste of extremely precious resources, such as water, trees, and minerals. We can avoid pulling virgin resources for conversion into other things when we recycle. One ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees. While this may not sound like a lot since a ton is equal to two thousand pounds, we can all do our part by recycling paper to save more trees. If every one of us contributes 4.4 pounds of trash a day on average, imagine what we can do if we all combat this in small ways like recycling our paper products? That is a lot of trees.
Recycling reduces pollution and fights climate change.
When we recycle, we avoid having to process materials, which leads to the emission of harmful greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases lead to smog and air pollution, which has a direct impact on our physical health as well. Smog and air pollution are not only harmful to our eyes, throat and nose, but they worsen pre-existing lung and heart conditions. The environmental effects of greenhouse gases are climate changes such as extreme weather and rising temperatures. Because the gases are leaked into the air, heat is unable to escape our atmosphere which causes temperatures to rise.
Recycling saves energy.
When we recycle, we have the materials ready to use. Recycling eliminates the need to create materials from scratch and saves on our energy and fuel. For example, when wood is processed to create paper, the process uses a great deal of energy. When a single glass bottle is recycled, it saves enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for up to four hours! Conserving energy also means that less money is spent which benefits our economy.
Do you recycle in your home? We hope you are feeling inspired to start if you don't already! Think of one thing you are grateful for about our planet and celebrate all of the beautiful things our Earth is home to today.
