After a long stressful week, the weekend is always filled with a lot of unwindings to cool off 5 days of stress. Some prefer staying at home, enjoying the serenity while others, the total opposite. Event centres, bars and the likes are always buzzing, filled to the brim till the eleventh hour of the weekend. These unwindings can't happen if there are no refreshments to set the mood which often leads to the littering of the place with all sorts of cans and bottles that mostly end up anywhere else apart from the red recycle bin where they belong.
These recyclables which mostly consist of bottles, cans and the likes when passed through due procedures can be taken care of without hassles, and this starts with a recycle bin.
A recycle bin or recycling bin is a container used to hold recyclables before they are taken to recycling centres. These bins are in different colours like red, blue, black etc. to identify the types of waste that are supposed to go in them and they are generally identified by the recycling symbols on them.
The Red bin is a type of recycle bin that takes mostly glass and metals as its constituent. These glasses may include bottles, worn-out glass materials from homes and even replaced glasses from the car repair industries. Whereas, the metals are majorly cans (drinks, aerosols), not needed parts from automobiles and every household scrap deemed not useful again.
In Nigeria today, glasses and metals are one of the most recycled materials thanks to the monetary value attached to them, unlike their waste counterparts. After events or weekend unwindings activities, event centres, bars and hotels make sure that every empty bottle is stacked into crates waiting for the next truck to take them back to their respective factories. Even roadside vendors of these bottled products are not left out as every customer pays a fee for the bottle except if it's to be returned.
Metals (cans) which are somehow less valuable are not allowed to wander about as some collection points offer a handsome token for a specific amount provided, which is why you see young children and even adults go around hustling for metals in exchange for those tokens.
Even though these practices are happening on a large scale, it doesn't dispute the fact that millions of these recyclable materials are up in trash, and that's why the practice of using the red bin is to be encouraged.
Here are some of the benefits of recycling metals and cans:
Reduced waste in landfills
Recycling metals and bottles significantly reduces the amount of scraps and waste found in landfills where it would take hundreds of years to decompose. And being that these materials are always productively useful, it would amount to wastage to dump them in landfills. They also take up considerable space in the landfills and make the land practically useless.
Conservation of energy
Recycling aluminium cans saves up 95% energy that would have been used to make new ones. An extra fun fact is that the cans can also be 100% recycled.
Conservation of natural resources
By recycling glasses and metals, natural resources used to make them, like bauxite ore, are conserved. The process of mining these raw materials involves the excavation of several layers of the earth's crust which impacts the environment negatively. Recycling helps to reduce the frequency of mining these materials.
Less pollution
The process of making metallic and glass materials involves a high amount of energy generated from the burning of fossil fuels which give rise to emissions that hurt our ecosystem. Recycling these materials reduces the rate at which their production occurs and thus reduces the level of pollution in the environment.
Improves the economy
It costs more money to make new metallic and glass materials than it does to recycle them. It therefore is economical for businesses to recycle these materials instead of producing new ones.
The Red recycle bin is a sustainable solution we can't do without. Particularly in places where cans, metals and glass materials are used, it is important that a few red bins are on standby and a recycling company is contacted to recycle the dumped metals and cans.
— Abdulsalam Abdulquddus
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