Leading up to the Great American Clean-up on April 18, LaGrange Daily News is featuring winning essays from a recycling competition sponsored by Keep Troup Beautiful. This essay by fifth grader Devin Jackson won second place in the fifth grade contest.

The earth is important because we live on it and if we don’t take care of it, it might be like living on a dump! Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Learn the three R’s and you’ll ve on your way to a better life of recycling.

People don’t want landfills but by not recycling they’re helping the problem. Recycling saves space in landfills for things that we can’t recycle. It helps the earth stay fresh and clean. It takes five hundred years for aluminum and plastic to decompose. Think how much plastic we throw away each day and how many soda cans we drink Five tons of oil ends up in the ocean each year. The amount of wood and paper we throw away is enough to heat fifty-million homes for twenty years.

Businesses that manufacture recycled goods reduce the cost of raw materials, meaning more money for you or your business. More than seven-thousand communities have a pay-as-you-throw program. The less you throw away the less you pay for your trash bill.

If you recycle there are benefits, too. Recycling expands U.S. manufacturing jobs and increases U.S. competitiveness. Recycling helps sustain the environment for future generations. Recycling prevents pollution. It reduces the need for landfills and incineration. Recycling has three main steps: collection and processing, manufacturing, and purchasing recyclable products. Collecting recyclables vary from community to community but there are four primary methods: curbside, drop-off centers, buy-back centers, and deposit/return programs. These programs take them to a recycling plant where they are cleaned and separated. Once cleaned and separated they are made into new items. Then the last step to the recycling process is buying recyclable products and starting the process over.

Buying recyclable goods is easy. They include aluminum cans, car dumpers, carpeting, cereal boxes, comic books, egg cartons, glass containers, laundry detergent bottles, motor oil, nails, newspaper, paper towels, steel products, and trash bags.

Composting is organic material that can be used as a soil amendment. It can also suppress plant diseases and pests. It provides cost savings of at least fifty percent over conventional soil, water, and air pollution remediation rechnologies.

Recycling is important to the earth because it helps the earth stay clean. If we don’t do our part to help the earth get better then we could run out of natural recourses that we can’t get back. All the things we do to the environment affects animals and many other things including us, though not as noticeable, it still affects us. All the pollution and other things we do to the environment can be kept to a minimum if we take the right steps now. We can do it if everyone helps and does their part and recycles. If we stop littering that will help a lot also. Recycling is easy if you just remember the three R’s: Reduce! Reuse! And Recycle!