Do you know these facts on recycling?

Beyond recycling and reuse, conversion of compounds in the waste products using their specifications by means of chemical, physical and biochemical methods to other products or energy is called "recycle".

Recycle preserves our natural resources, saves energy and contributes economy reducing waste material and invests to the future.

Works have been done for long times on recycling processes of the wastes in Turkey. Waste material such as glass, paper, cardboard, plastics and metal wastes are collected from waste collection fields and by street waste pickers and used as raw material source in various industries.

Collection of used packaging material and other gradable wastes as clean and separate from other wastes is the first stage of recycling process. Separately collected recyclable wastes must be separated according to types in order to apply recycling processes.

• Approximately 15-20 % of wastes generated in Turkey is recyclable waste material.
• Packaging is not a waste but is also a raw material. Lets collect packages separately which are not possible to recycle.
• Lets pay attention any product to be recyclable when purchasing a product.
• Lets recycle used papers using papers and notebooks economic.
• We can recycle the papers we used collecting and we can prevent environmental pollution.
• 44% of the letters sent by people to each other are not read. One ton used paper protects 16 pine trees when recycled and one ton newsprint paper prevents 8 pine trees to be cut when recycled.
• Stopping only 100,000 family to write unnecessary letters saves 150,000 trees each year from being cut.
• A person consumes 8 months in his/her life to open unnecessary correspondence letters.
• One office staff wastes 81 kgs of high quality paper in a year.
• Lets prefer cloth bags, basket and nets instead of disposable plastic bags.
• Plastics are the material which require the longest decomposition period in the nature and are hard to decompose. Therefore said material must be collected separately and recycled as much as possible.
• Plastic packaging wastes are used as raw material in secondary production converting granules after washing. They are used for greenhouse cover, plastic bag in automotive industry, vinyl floor covering, drain pipe, fiber and filling material, automotive spare part production.
• We save 95% of energy by recycling metal and plastics when compared to new production.
• 100 liters of oil is saved for each ton of glass recycled.
• Glass bottle survives 4000 years in the nature and plastic 1000 years, chewing gum 5 years and bear can for 10-100 years and cigarette filter survives 2 years in the nature.

Recycle of glass bottle and jars have been applied for quite older times among household wastes. Glass bottle and jar and other glass wastes are converted to glass powder after breaking. Glass powder is mixed with sand, lime stone and soda ash and converted to new products shaping in high temperature.