Is Disposing Trash in one bin Cheaper than Segregating it?

I am quite sure this question must have popped up in your mind at least once; “is it really worth segregating all my trash?” If you love the environment, then you probably would not need a valid reason. Else, if you are one of those who would simply recycle because the law forces you to, then this thought would have definitely come across your mind, every single time you sat down to segregate your daily trash.



Recycling can be simply defined as the process in which used materials can be processed into new products to prevent the waste of the remainder, while reducing the consumption of virgin materials for producing other new products. Simply put, it is environmentally good to recycle. “But isn’t disposing trash together in one garbage bag cheaper?” one may ask.

Just in case you are not aware about this, but it is a fact that landfills, worldwide are filling up—and fast. The worldwide population is rising to unprecedented levels and there is no space to get rid of the trash that we generate on a day-to-day basis. This is where I come back to your question; to which the answer is a big ‘NO’.
overnments and municipalities worldwide are paying large sums of money for getting rid of humongous amounts of waste into landfills. Landfills too will keep filling up, which is why landfills owners have begun landfill-mining. Landfill mining started-off back in 1953 in Israel and the rest of the world has only begun to catch up with it recently. The reason why it has caught up only recently is because there were other more important events that took place after 1953; following which most countries forgot about the whole concept. Landfill mining involves opening up closed landfills and filtering and sorting out the trash (mainly metals) which is then packed up and tucked in once again. Doing this is profitable, since large amounts of scrap metal can be recovered and more space can be created within the landfill itself. Scrap metal recyclers would be more than glad to take in such metals which mainly consists of ferrous scrap, copper scrap and aluminium scrap; usually in the form of cans (since most people dump them along with their regular trash). But this would also depend upon several other factors such as the quality of the scrap metals.




Recycling at home, kills the problem from the root, segregating trash at its origin; and is right about the best thing one can do to save this planet. After all it is we who are stuck here on the third rock from the Sun; and there is—as of today—no other place to go.