Rock on, Scavengers!

Rock on, Scavengers!.
Every day, people produce many types of garbage, such as paper, plastic, glass, and alumunium. These recyclable materials are ususaly disposed along with other household waste, wich is then collected and transported to the city landfill.

Do you know what happens next? A large part of these materials are piled up into the ground where they go through the process of breaking down into the smallest elements, otherwise known as decomposotition. Paper needs approximately five months to decompose, while plastic bags take up to 20 years. Alumunium takes up to 200 years to decompose, plastic beverage bottles about 450 years, and glass bottles and plastic jugs about a million years! That’s quite a long time to spend in a landfill!

That’s why garbage scavengers, who are often overlooked, play an important role. Their role is quite significant in recycling materials like paper, plastic, glass and alumunium. Look around, and you’ll see them out on the streets, in the dumpsters, or walking around your neighborhood. They are easily identified by their sack or pushcart, wich they use to stuff in types of material wich they consider good enough to be collected and sold to dealers. These dealers pay them according to the type of material. At the dealers’, recyclable materials are sorted and cleaned. Bottles or jars ussualy require washing, removal of labels, and removal of baottle caps. Plastic cups are cleaned from their plastic top. Dealers then sell their recyclable materials to each of the materials’ recycling plant.

At a paper recycling factory, waste paper is turned to pulp, then undergoes several treatments such as coarse screening, ink removal, fine cleaning, brightening, and de colorization. The finishished recycled pulp is then either sent to a mill for papermaking or it is formed into sheets of pulp, called “wet lap,” for shipment and sale. Glass recycling factories take waste glass to crush into little pieces and melt along with other raw materials into a liquid state called gobs. These gobs are then dropped into a mold to form new bottles and jars. At the alumunium recycling plant, cans are shredded, remelted with virgin alumunium and cast into the new ingots. The ingots are rolled into long, thin sheets that are coiled and sent to the can manufacturing plant to be made into new alumunium cans. Plasting recycling factories sort plastic by polymer type and color, which are then washed, chopped into smaller pieces, and resorted. The plastic pieces are dried, melted, filtered for contaminants, and then squeezed out into strands, which are spun into fiber or cut into plastic pellets.

So through a chain of garbage scavengers and dealers, whose roles of recycling often go unnoticed, collected materials are eventually recycled. Paper, plastic, glass and alumunium are saved from a destiny of being pilled up at a landfill. Thumbs up for garbage scavengers.

You can help too!

Be a participant in the recycling of paper, plastic, glass, and alumunium by sorting them fisrt instead of throwing them right away in the trash can. Keep them in separate place, then donate or sell your junk collection to a garbage scavengers. By doing this, not only do you help the scavengers but also contribute to preserving the earth.