Do you care about the environment? Like, do you really, really care about the environment? These days, it’s “cool” to care about the environment and go green, but few people truly understand the severity of their actions in terms of how they could potentially be harming the environment unknowingly. After all, caring about the environment involves a lot more than just buying environmentally friendly products here or there, slapping a few stickers on the back bumper of your car, and fighting trolls on social media. Being a true environmentalist is a conscious choice and involves creating a lifestyle around those choices.
Becoming a conscious consumer is an integral part of being an environmentalist. You can say you care bout the environment, post several environmental memes on your social media accounts, and tell everyone how much you love the earth, but if you’re continuing to support companies that are not environmentally sustainable or responsible, then you’re causing far more harm than good. This involves turning a blind eye to recycling paper and plastic products such as thermoform packaging, thermoformed trays, food packaging containers, ready made plastic trays, and plastic shrink bags.
Although many Americans claim to care about the environment, few actually stop and take take the time to follow through on this sentiment by recycling. In a society that emphasis it’s consumers to buy, buy, buy at alarming rates, little to no emphasis is placed on recycling, reusing, or repurposing common good such as thermoform packaging. In fact, you probably have a good number of thermoform packaging in your home right now that can be recycled!
Perhaps if more people were aware of the benefits of recycling plastics such as thermoform packaging, more people would be inclined to actually recycle. Here are just a few out of many reasons why recycling thermoform packaging is so important.
It conserves energy and natural resources
Many people underestimate exactly how many natural resources such as water and petroleum is required to manufacture many of the plastic goods and packaging material used in everyday life. Research from the American Plastics Council reveals that nearly 4% of the United States’ total energy consumption is used to manufacture virgin plastics. Recycling helps to conserve the natural resources and energy needed in order to create plastics.
It reduces landfill space
Many landfills struggle to keep up with the amount of waste that’s sent their way each and every day, most of which could have been recycled, reused, or repurposed in some way. Plastics often make up a significant amount of the waste that ends up in landfills, which is why recycling them is so important. In addition, recycling plastics also prevents them entering waterways such as rivers, lakes, and the ocean, where they can cause serious damage to the ecosystem.
It’s really easy
If you stop and think about it, there really is no excuse not to recycle other than pure laziness or a lack of empathy. It makes perfect sense to recycle. After all, why would you want to damage the very environment that has sustained you since birth? At 80%, the overwhelming majority of Americans have access to plastic recycling centers or programs. And since there is a universal numbering system for categorizing which plastics can be recycled, this takes the guesswork out of trying to figure all that out.