By Emily Muntz
According to Record Nations, a typical school will use 2,000 sheets of paper per day, which adds up to 320,000 sheets per school per year. With roughly 100,000 schools in the US, that adds up to schools using 32 billion sheets of paper per year. That is roughly 160,000 tons of paper, which, with garbage costs being roughly $296 per ton, adds up to garbage costs equaling $47,360,000 just on paper every year. That’s not even taking into consideration how much other garbage gets thrown away from lunches or other places throughout the school.
Many argue that recycling costs twice as much as garbage, but if you recycle paper, in the long run that will save you money on your garbage costs. To start, you don’t have as much garbage to throw away weekly, which would bring down those costs. Secondly, it will help the environment and sometimes go back to help your community. Recycling limits the waste and helps to keep the pollutants in water and the air. It also helps the functionality and durability of landfills that are currently in use and even creates jobs for other individuals under unemployment. All of these do and will affect the future generations and help both the environment and economy.
Now, in the US, 63% of schools recycle. That is helping to bring down the amount of waste each year. Recycling will limit the cost that schools spend on garbage every year. I personally think recycling is a great program for all schools to be involved in. It forms a good habit of being more environmentally cautious.