Can recycling...is it worth it???

I hear what your saying about washing the cans out, but I do think it's worth it so our landfills don't get so full up, well that quickly anyway. I spend a lot of time going through the recycling at mine to make sure nothing is thrown away into the rubbish that can be recycled, if we only make a small contribution then surely it's worth it?

I give my cans a quick rinse before I pop them in the recycling container, but I just swill them through the washing up water when I'm done so I'm not using any extra water for the cans alone. I'm sure the benefits of recycling outweigh the water that you use, but maybe you could change the way that you wash them in order to cut back on water usage?

It's not mandatory for us to do recycling in our country but we are very encouraged to do so. The awareness of recycling among the society is still not very high. It's because the government didn't put too much effort in cultivating the habit among the people. I myself always pratise the 3Rs though. For the bottles or cans, I usually just rinse it once. The main purpose is to remove the odour or degradeble liquid for better hygiene, in the recycling center. It's a little counter productive to wash them until shinning clean. . The recycled material processor will still wash it again before they were re-processed.

I just received $80.00 for our cans and bottles. This is certainly worth it for me to recycle them. How many people would throw away that much money? I certainly hope the answer is nobody.

Here, in the Philippines, there is an organization who makes use of tin cans and recycle them to make wheelchairs. I don't know how they do it, but they do collect those and my dad said they melt them and use the metal to make wheelchairs. The wheelchairs are then donated to those who cannot afford one.

Recycling is an absolute nightmare, in our recycling box we put tins, plastic things and all that sort of thing, and yes it has to be washed it drives me nuts it can take up so much time sometimes too. But I agree water is wasted in the process of cleaning them!

here in my place (well i am not from US not from UK) we put cans and plastic bins inside a garbage bag and let the garbage truck collect it. they will not collect the garbage that are not segregated. bottles and cans go togather. wet and dry garbage must be in separate garbage bags.

In the US, anything we recycle can be roughly rinsed, but it doesn't need to be cleaned. I always recycle something if it can be recycled, as I see it as beneficial to the planet. Not only that, but it saves us some space in the trash can. Granted, I have to take my cans and plastic to the recycling center, which takes time and gas; but it's still worth it. In the US only about 10% of everything that can be recycled is, so I feel I need to at least to do my part.

you are supposed to but why? they are going to incenarate them at such a high temperature that it will clean the impurities any ways. But it is better to recycle than to waste our resources by throwing them away to never be used again. We have to do our part to save and keep our countries clean from excessive garbage.

I wash out my tin cans before I recycle them, too and I'll agree that disposing of the water you use to wash them is a bit counter-productive. But there's always a way of using that water so that it isn't wasted - I usually tend to water my garden plants with it.