Have you ever stopped to think about the benefits of recycling your bottles and cans at the bottle depot?
We all know that in order to get back the deposit paid at the time of purchase, you have to collect and return your empty drink containers at a depot, but when you take the time to think beyond that, there are many other reasons to make the effort.
When your empty drink containers are recycled, they can be reused to make new drink containers or other products. Reusing materials saves our resources by using fewer new materials. Recycling also keeps bottles and cans out of landfills where they can only take up space and take a very long time to decompose. When recycled, they are useful again very quickly. The whole process of making old materials into new products also saves quite a bit on emissions which is always helpful as well.
If you live in Calgary, Alberta and have searched for “bottle depot calgary”, Sunridge Bottle Depot is where your search ends.The government of Alberta has chosen the bottle deposit and refund model to help ensure everyone in the community has a vested interest in recycling in order to ensure these important benefits of bottle and can recycling are utilized:
Extract Fewer Raw Materials
When items such as glass bottles are reused, no new materials are required at all. The bottle is simply washed and sanitized and used again. This, of course, saves 100 percent of the raw materials that would be required to make a new bottle.
In cases where the materials can be recycled into new drink containers, only a minimal amount of new raw materials are required. When drink containers are cycled into new products such as glass being used to make fiberglass or pulp from recycled cartons turned into new paper plates, the amount of new material can be as low as 10 percent. There are even circumstances where no new materials have to be used at all and the entire recycled product can be made into new items.
Reduce Unnecessary Garbage In Landfills
Every bottle or can kept out of landfills saves many years of time in a landfill, taking up space, waiting for the product to decompose. In this case, not only does the product take up room, the decomposition can also be negative for the environment because metals are leached back into the ground. If materials are reused as many times as possible, they eventually become used up in the process and can be disposed of in a more responsible manner or just used entirely.
Reduce Emissions
Making existing materials into new items takes significantly less resources, producing fewer emissions in the process, than extracting or creating materials from brand new. Fewer things are trucked around longer distances as well. When bottles and cans are recycled, many emissions are saved from entering our atmosphere.
Recycling is a very important part of creating sustainable purchasing practices. We make our own footprint lighter on the planet when we recycle bottles and cans at the bottle depot. And it has been made financially necessary as well to ensure there is as much uptake on recycling programs as possible.
