Caring for God’s Creation Through Recycling

Last week, we received a notice through the door from Mole Valley Council giving us a list of new items that can now be recycled in the green bins, including toothpaste tubes and clean foil trays.

Recycling is an important way of ensuring we protect the earth’s resources and God’s creation. It is one of the ways we can manage the amount of waste we all produce. In the waste hierarchy, it is the next thing after we have done all we can to PREVENT waste by buying unnecessary stuff. Then we can REDUCE our packaging, for example, buying items without wrapping and then REUSING as much as we can, for example, mending things and buying second-hand.

RECYCLING is turning materials we throw away into other useful items. Recycling not only helps to manage our waste better by preventing rubbish from going to landfill, but also helps to reduce the need for extracting, refining and processing. For example, recycling materials like aluminium and paper saves a significant amount of energy compared to producing them from raw materials.

Recyclables can be regarded as a “seventh resource” alongside air, water, oil, natural gas, coal and minerals. It is estimated that it saves over 700 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year and supplies 40% of global raw material needs. Recyclables are a renewable and limitless resource. Recycling is therefore not just a good waste management habit, but when you recycle you contribute to global resource preservation, climate protection and circular living.

Recycling as much as possible is not difficult, especially when we just have to separate rubbish which is collected. We can also go the extra mile with recycling by taking some things, such as soft plastics, blister packs and make-up to special recycling points at collection points in supermarkets and pharmacies. It all helps to conserve God’s creation.