opinion essay recycling

Essay on Recycling for Students and Children

500+ words essay on recycling.

Recycling is a method of procedure that includes the collection and breaking down of waste material to create something new out of it. The process was introduced sot that the non-biodegradable materials can be melted or break down to create something useful. After the effects of global warming and pollution have become known to men the process of recycling has become more important.

Why We Need Recycling?

We need recycling for many reasons. But most importantly, it will help us to save our planet. Besides, recycling saves the earth by facilitating the reprocess of paper which will save millions of trees.

Also, recycling saves a lot of energy because many things that we recycle can easily be converted into virgin materials. In addition, it saves a lot of resources too.

Moreover, recycling reduces the burden of the environment. As we save energy the number of greenhouse gases and oxides are produced in less quantity. Because most of the toxic gases are produced by factories.

In addition, recycling reduces the amount of waste, that takes years to decompose. Also, the recycled material can be sold. We use this recycled material for the manufacturing of many new products. So, ultimately recycling saves money.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

The Process of Recycling

The various materials that we recycle have to go through a process that refines and purifies them. Besides, different materials go through a different process and in this topic we will discuss the recycling process of various materials.

Paper- It is the most used material on the earth. Paper is made up of two materials water and wood. For recycling paper firstly they break it down in small pieces and dissolve it into water. After that, they add chemicals that filter out the ink and dirt from it. In addition after filtering the paper takes the form of a mush called the pulp and this pulp is later converted into clean paper.

Metals-  The metals are first shredded into small pieces and then they were melted and after that remolded into new shapes.

Glass- The recycling of glass is the easier they just break it into pieces and then they melt it and recast them.

Plastic- They also follow the same process as plastic. But, the process of plastic recycling is a little bit complex because they have to sort out the different types of plastics. As there is a diverse variety of plastic with different properties.

How Can We Contribute to Recycling?

Almost everything that we use can be recycled whether it is household materials like paper, plastic, metal, glass, furniture, toys, artifacts, vehicles, etc. Besides, opt for things from the market that can easily be recycled. Also, try to use merchandise that is made up of recycled products.

In addition, sort your waste and dump your recyclable waste in the recycle bin so that the authorities can recycle it.

To Sum it up, recycling is a small step by humans to save the environment . But this small step is very effective in the long run. Also, before throwing away the waste we should check it to see if there is a recyclable product in it or not.

FAQs about Essay on Recycling

Q.1 List some benefits of recycling. A.1 There are many benefits to recycling like:

• It reduces the amount of waste produced by us.
• Conserves natural resources such as water, wood, and minerals.
• It prevents the overuse of resources and helps in preserving them.
• In addition, it saves energy.

Q.2 Give an important fact related to recycling. A.2 An important fact can be that recycling reduces the amount of waste which goes to landfills. Also, lesser density in landfill means less amount of methane and other gases is released into the air.

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Everything Americans think they know about recycling is probably wrong

Everything you think you know about recycling is probably wrong. Since the slogan “reduce, reuse and recycle” became part of the cultural lexicon in the 1970s during the birth of Earth Day when Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act , the concept of recycling has become the go-to refrain for the average citizen casually — but not acutely — concerned about the environment. The problem is, if you ask people to explain what happens to their waste after they throw it in the bin, almost no American is able to answer. And that’s because our perception of recycling in the U.S. and the realities of actual recycling do not match up.

The concept of recycling has become the go-to refrain for the average citizen casually — but not acutely — concerned about the environment.

The truth is, there’s no universal form of recycling across the country. Every city and state has its own regulations and methods that govern how and what it recycles. In some places, recycling is mostly effective and efficient. In other places, some or all of what is thrown into a recycling bin ends up in in landfills or garbage incinerators. And even though the EPA estimates that about 75 percent of waste produced in the U.S. is capable of being recycled, the U.S. recycling rate has plateaued at about 34 percent — and that hasn’t changed since 2010 . The sad fact is that, even though most of us believe in the theoretical benefits of recycling, we may not be participating efficiently — or at all.

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Before we get into the problems with recycling in the U.S. it’s important to point out that, though we could be doing a much better job, even a little bit of inefficient recycling is better than no recycling at all. According to the EPA , Americans are still returning about 68 million tons of raw materials back into the manufacturing market every year. And that means, in the case of paper for example, fewer trees cut down, less carbon burned hauling logs to mills, less energy and water used to pulp those trees and an overall net gain for the environment. Recycling is good. Recycling works. And we need to keep recycling.

But raw material is the key word here when looking at the benefit of even the most efficient recycling system. Recycling isn’t a nebulous humanitarian environmental practice of collecting waste. It is, actually, a business. It’s a commodities market that we all participate in. It produces paper pulp and plastic pellets and glass shards and other materials that are used by manufacturers to make goods. So even in the best recycling systems the goods you send to the recycler to be processed are only going to become new products if there’s a market demand for them. (For example, is there a bottling factory in your community that needs glass or a paper mill nearby that needs pulp?)

And not all recycling plants are actually capable of processing all materials. (For example, foam containers and thin film plastic, like plastic bags or saran wrap, are actually very difficult or impossible to recycle and end up in landfills even if you put them in the recycling bin.) Just like any market the need for commodities is variable. Sometimes there’s no one around that currently needs glass, for example, and so recyclers will either store those products for later sale or just send them off to the landfill or incinerator.

This means you think you’ve recycled 100 percent of the recyclable goods you buy when, in fact, you probably haven’t.

This means you think you’ve recycled 100 percent of the recyclable goods you buy when, in fact, you probably haven’t. “Like wheat and oil and gold, recycled commodities like aluminum, paper, metals, and plastics have value and those fluctuate,” says Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney at the National Resources Defense Council. “To run a recycling program you don’t want to keep changing the rules all the time.”

And that means you end up having consumers knowingly and unknowingly participating in what Ruth Abbe, president of Zero Waste USA, calls wishcycling. “We wish it was recyclable, so we recycle it anyway,” even if it’s just going to end up in a landfill, she says.

But these are problems that exist in all systems, including the most efficient ones. And it’s true that in some places in the U.S. our processes are working well — big cities like San Francisco on the West Coast claim to be recycling about 70 percent or more of their waste (though this is hard to measure and these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt). In regions like Boulder, Colorado and Saint Paul, Minnesota for example, recycling companies are independent non-profits who operate with the mission of recycling as much as they can. But in other parts of the country, especially in East Coast cities like Washington D.C. , the recycling system is run by large waste hauling monopolies where the focus isn’t on recycling, it’s on profit.

“The reason why recycling costs so much is because the big waste management companies realized recycling was taking away from their profits. Recycling is their enemy,” says Neil Seldman, director of the Waste to Wealth Initiative at the Institute for Local Self Reliance. “That’s the achilles heel of big waste.”

According to Seldman, these companies are doing the majority of the country’s recycling while also operating the majority of our landfill business. And because they’re more focused on the less expensive process of filling their landfills, they’ve convinced the cities they work with to move away from recycling systems that process smaller, more manageable amounts of recyclables on several lines (meaning the waste is better sorted) to processing huge amounts on single lines, which is less expensive, less complicated and allows them to process a larger volume — but creates more contaminated less-desirable end materials.

And while places like Minneapolis and Saint Paul are sending 90 percent of their high quality processed raw materials to manufacturers inside the state, these big companies in places like Washington DC are carting waste to facilities far outside the cities they collect from and then mostly shipping their low quality contaminated processed materials out of the country to China.

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“In the 1990s, about five percent of U.S. cities used single stream recycling. By 2010, 75 percent of cities were using it. Recycling is stagnating in the US not because people don’t want to recycle, it’s because the structure is the least efficient form of recycling,” says Seldman.

To compound this problem, China has recently passed laws that will ban most recycling from outside the country — specifically plastic. Says Seldman: “The materials were so contaminated the cost of labor went up so much China couldn’t afford to clean our materials. That’s not the fault of recycling, it’s the fault of cities going to single stream. It's been a disaster.” And that means cities around the U.S. are now either going to have to give up recycling altogether ( which some, like Deltona, Florida , have indicated they will do) or convert their recycling processes over to more efficient systems, which Seldman says is the more likely future.

According to the NRDC’s Goldstein, there are a few ways that the U.S. can recover from the loss of China: “One thing that is needed is greater investment by private industry in, as well as government incentives for, new processing capacity for recyclables. (Some of that is happened, 16 paper mills have recently announced plans to expand to handle mixed paper and cardboard generated by US recycling programs.) And there is the failure of the federal government, as well as most states and cities, to step up their procurement of products made with recycled materials. That too would stimulate demand and therefore enhance the economics of municipal recycling operations.”

So where does that leave the American public? For starters, it means we have to stop thinking that recycling is “enough” when it comes to the planet.

But even if all our cities are pushed by China to become more efficient and more innovative — and even if our recycling rates start to climb again — we’ll still always have the issue of market variability.

So where does that leave the American public? For starters, it means we have to stop thinking that recycling is “enough” when it comes to the planet. In truth, recycling is arguably less important than re-using and reducing. Yes, without question recycling is an essential aspect of a healthy planet and clean environment. But it should also be our last resort.

“The big takeaway from the era that we’re in is that we really should be more mindful about what we’re purchasing. We shouldn’t depend on the fact that we can recycle it. First you have to reduce,” says Zero Waste’s Abbe.

Reducing our consumption of items that we will have to throw in the trash or the recycling bin — or completely replacing those items with products that we can reuse and not throw away at all — is a good way to offset the fact that recycling isn’t a magic bullet solution for the planet. The fewer items you have drop in the recycling bin, the less you have to worry about whether or not those items will be recycled efficiently or whether or not the commodities market is currently demanding them.

“The whole story is about consumption and how much Americans consume and how much we aspire to consume. This is the cornerstone of sustainability,” says the NRDC’s Goldstein. “If everybody in the world used as much energy and consumed as much materials as the average American does we wouldn’t be passing on to our children and grandchildren a sustainable world.”

In the end, even if a bottle or a can or a piece of paper is recycled, that doesn’t mean its impact is erased. It took valuable resources to create that object in the first place. So if recycling a piece of paper saves a tree, just imagine how many resources could have be saved if we never even needed to make that piece of paper to begin with.

Erin Biba is a science journalist who writes about climate change, field science, biology, technology and other science-related topics. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, WIRED, The Daily Beast, and Popular Science and BBC.

Essays About Recycling: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

Essays about recycling raise awareness regarding the planet’s destruction; see our top essay examples and prompts to create a powerful piece.

An American disposes of about 1,800 pounds of garbage annually into a landfill. To visualize it better, one mature male cow has the same weight. Because there are at least 332 million Americans in the country , it’s no wonder there’s an ongoing problem with garbage disposal. 

Recycling is an excellent way to deal with this dilemma. Through recycling, used materials can be salvaged and reprocessed to create new products. However, there are specific steps to follow to recycle each material the right way. Regardless, recycling helps a lot in the preservation of natural resources and benefits many aspects of human lives.

Below are essay examples to read to know what a great essay about recycling looks like:

1. Essay on Recycling for Students and Children by Anonymous on Toppr.com

2. essay on recycling- concept, benefits & importance of recycling by anonymous on mystudentessays.com, 3. reuse reduce recycle by anonymous on essaykitchen.net, 4. recycling of materials by anonymous in studycorgi, 5. the value of recycling by anonymous on corkwritersgroup.com, 1. my way of recycling, 2. how to recycle, 3. why we should recycle, 4. recycling in different countries, 5. generating income from recycling , 6. why people don’t recycle, 7. if we stop recycling, 8. eco-warrior inspirations.

“…recycling is a small step by humans to save the environment. But this small step is very effective in the long run.”

The author briefly explains what recycling is, ensuring the definition is straightforward so the readers can easily understand it. This essay delves into why recycling is necessary, especially for its role in saving the planet. It also discusses the recycling process, focusing on common materials such as paper and plastic. Finally, the essay concludes with what people can do to participate in recycling.

“Given the fact that we are living in a world that is predominantly surrounded by a host of climate issues. We need to focus [on] recycling for [a] better, safe and clean environment.”

The essay blames overpopulation and industrialization for ruining the environment. It also mentions that recycling is critical to saving the Earth before listing five of its benefits. Finally, the author concludes by urging the readers to do their part in protecting the planet through recycling.

“The importance of reduc[e] reuse recycle is ever-increasing with the rising pollution levels in the world… With so many benefits, the human race needs to realize its significance to save the world for its coming generations.”

After an impactful introduction shifting the readers’ attention to the fact that recycling saves the environment and helps man produce without the need to sacrifice more resources, the essay goes on to explain three other great benefits of this practice. These are: conserving energy, reducing pollution (global warming), and saving money. The writer also demands teaching younger generations about the current environmental problems so they can help the older age group in saving the planet.

“The present world is faced with complex environmental problems, and there is general misinformation on environmental concepts… Advocates of environmental consciousness must strive to stop the complex explanations, and focus more on unvarnished terms which will give Americans an easy description of what is expected of them.”

Acknowledging that both developed and developing countries are affected by waste disposal, the author then looks for the causes. They start by analyzing man’s garbage disposal habits, which weren’t a problem at the beginning of time since most trash was organic. That is until the start of the agricultural revolution, followed by the rapid population increase. The essay shares studies and cites them throughout the piece as the writer discusses relevant points connected to the topic. 

“Recycling is the process of making use of waste or used materials in a more effective manner. Actually, if we want to leave this planet productive and healthy for the future generations, recycling is mandatory or crucial in [the] modern world.”

The writer is adamant about instilling in his readers the reality that recycling is not an option. Instead, it’s a requirement that we must do to keep something for the future. They mention how negligent people are in wasting this planet’s little resources, opening the entire human race to many risks. The essay also mentions recycling’s importance to the environment and the economy, saying it should start at home and, when done by everyone, will make a massive difference to the world. 

You need excellent grammar and syntax to create an engaging and readable piece. See our guide on grammar and syntax to improve your writing.

8 Prompts on Essays About Recycling

Try these prompts to jumpstart your essay writing:

For this writing prompt, talk about what you can do as an individual to help in recycling. It can be the small things, such as segregating reusable materials at home or posting about the benefits of recycling on your social media pages. You can also mention that writing your essay about recycling is a way to contribute to this vital movement by spreading knowledge and awareness.

Many know what recycling is, but not everyone understands the steps they should follow to achieve recycling’s goals. So, in your essay, explain how to recycle correctly. You can also add how recycling can be a fun activity for anyone of all ages. For instance, you can put instructions on how to assemble a bowling game with recycled bottles. Doing so will give family members something to bond over during holidays and weekends. Additionally, interview data or surveys to gather public information on how the average person recycles.

Because there are already many pieces explaining why recycling is essential, make your essay stand out by connecting it to relevant events. For example, you can start your essay with recent news about global warming, such as a severe storm in your area that affected many. Then, link your article to how recycling can help prevent these disasters.

Countries have ways of dealing with scarce resources and executing garbage disposal practices. For this prompt, discuss how different communities recycle their trash. First, discuss the best recycling countries like Germany and South Korea and their practices. Then, pick out what the rest of the world should apply in their recycling regimen.

There are many ways that recycling products can be turned into a business. From selling reusable materials like metals and plastic bottles to opening a vintage clothes store, show the opportunities recycling offers. Don’t forget to add eco-friendly business practices and encourage your readers to support those that promote sustainable living.

Although recycling has many advantages for the environment, some cons prevent everyone from infusing recycling into their everyday lives. Openly discuss the lack of programs educating people on how to recycle, why many think recycling is inconvenient, and other restraints. Remember to include possible solutions to these limits.

In this prompt, create an imaginary scenario where no one recycles. Detail what will happen to the community, environment, and nature. Aside from losing space due to garbage, we’ll also have to deal with health hazards and possibly new diseases. You can also debate a positive sequence, where people may find a way to control garbage through new technologies or operations.

In this essay, discuss a person, business, or organization that is an eco-warrior and inspiration. It can be your school, office, or someone at home. Talk about how they carry out proper recycling, who pushed the ideas to fruition, and what they do with the materials they recycle. You can also comment on what facets of their recycling program you want other places to copy or which parts they could improve. Use anecdotes and research data to support your opinion for a compelling essay.

Read these essay writing tips to use them in your writing.

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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Recycling Argumentative Essay

Have you ever seen a water bottle or an empty bag of Doritos on the ground, and you just kept walking?  Next time, pick it up, and see how big of a difference it can make.  Recycling is important and should be done because it reduces the need for landfills, reduces the amount of pollution, and protects the environment and animal habitats.  This issue is affecting the whole planet, and this is a big issue because if people don’t recycle, conditions could get worse, and people don’t recycle as often as they should.

Firstly, recycling reduces the need for landfills.  If we recycle, items don’t need to go to landfills because people will still be using them. (MidCityScrap)  This shows that recycling reduces need for landfills.  Next, 60 -75% of garbage in landfills can be recycled (MidCityScrap)  This shows that, if we just recycled more, landfills would be emptier.  Lastly, if we recycled more, more landfills wouldn’t have to be built around cities, which is affecting environment and wildlife. (ConserveEnergyFuture)  This shows that recycling more means that less landfills, and safer environments as an added bonus.      

Secondly, recycling reduces the amount of pollution.  The more you recycle old products, the less you will need to buy any new products, which means you’ll be saving energy. (ConserveEnergyFuture)  Since energy is a major problem with pollution, saving energy means less pollution. Secondly, trees being converted into paper is the most water-intensive industrial process in the United States.  However, paper recycling mills almost always use less water, plus, they don’t pollute it as much. (Princeton)  This shows that if we recycled paper more often, we wouldn’t pollute as much.  Finally, incinerators let out many types of air pollutants, so recycling would reduce the need for incinerators. (Princeton)  This shows that incinerators wouldn’t be as common, so pollution wouldn’t be as common, either.      

Lastly, recycling protects the environment and animal habitats. First off,  because we are constantly having to make new paper because paper isn’t being recycled, half of Earth’s trees are gone.  Around 90% of original forest in the United States has been chopped down. (Princeton)  Since many animals need trees to survive, trees are needed to protect the environment and ecosystem.  Second, using recycled materials lowers the need to use natural resources like timber or mineral ores.  (ConserveEnergyFuture)  Since many animals also need these to survive, these need to be kept to keep them living.  Finally, people cut down trees and destroy animal habitats in order to build landfills and pollutant-producing incinerators.  That means if we recycle, animal habitats and environments can be safe.    

 Others may say that recycling is a waste of time.  However, recycling is not a waste of time because if one person recycles, and other people begin to recycle also, it will all add up.  Opponents may also say that recycling isn’t going to get us anyway.  However, recycling will get us somewhere because we will have less garbage, less pollution, and a better environment.

Reducing need for landfills, reducing the amount of pollution, and protecting the environment and animal habitats are all reasons why we recycling is important and why we need to do it.  Next time you see an empty water bottle on the ground, go throw it in the nearest garbage can, and you could have saved an animal, environment, or the whole planet.

I had to write my opinion of this topic because I've noticed that people aren't recycling as much as they should and I've wanted to bring it to people's attention.

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119 Recycling Essay Topics & Examples

☝️ 12 top recycling research topics, 🏆 best recycling topics & essay examples, 🔎 good recycling essay topics, ⭐ simple & easy recycling essay titles, ❓ research questions about recycling.

Recycling essays are helpful for letting you understand the scope of the pollution issue and the methods humanity can use to reduce its effects and move to safe practices.

Various international organizations are concerned about the topic, and expressions of support for initiatives to recycle waste include the institution of holidays such as the World Environment Day.

There are various ideas about the measures that can be taken to protect the environment, which you can use as recycling essay hooks, but not all of them are viable, as money and technological concerns interfere with the process of best taking out waste strongly.

To create an interesting and powerful essay, you will want to introduce a solid structure that will add clarity and purpose to your writing.

The act of creating a structure begins with the creation of an introduction, a section where you will familiarize the reader with the context of the essay and create a thesis statement.

Try to avoid mentioning facts that are not common knowledge and avoid using citations, as you are trying to give a general overview of the field as you see it.

Approach the thesis statement with care, as it will be at the center of your essay, and all of your arguments should support its idea or answer its question. As such, the introduction will set the direction of your essay, providing the first significant element of its structure.

The next step should be the writing of an outline, a chart of how you will select topics to discuss and organize them in the essay. To construct it, you will first want to write down all of the different concepts you see as applicable to the thesis as recycling essay titles.

Then, eliminate them or fold them into other headings until you have a sufficiently small number remaining that you can elaborate on each one within the essay’s limitations. The last part is to organize them in a set order so that they follow some logical structure and support each other.

You can then use the outline elements as titles for different sections of your essay. With this, the basic structure should be complete, and you can proceed to write your essay. Here are a few tips to help you as you work:

• Use transition words to improve the flow of your essay and help it appear as a single stream instead of a collection of disconnected points. Examples of transition words include also, however, therefore, first of all, accordingly, and specifically.
• Try to begin and end your paragraphs with connecting sentences that establish a connection with the previous and next blocks of text. The rest of the paragraph will be the body that presents your arguments, mirroring the layout of the overall essay.
• Be sure to link every point you make to your thesis in an explicit manner. The approach improves the structure of your essay by making it clear how everything you say is related to your central message.
• Finish the paper with a conclusion that will sum up the information provided in the essay. Do not introduce any new data or reasoning that was not presented before in your recycling essay conclusions.
• Finish the paragraph with final remarks that describe your perception of the findings and the future directions you suggest.

If you require more help in your writing, find recycling essay topics and other useful samples at IvyPanda!

• Recycling in Japan vs. the US: Compare and Contrast.
• The Benefits of Recycled Waste Management.
• How Can We Reuse Glass in Construction?
• Medical Waste During the Covid-19 Pandemic.
• The Glass Disposal System in the US.
• The Pressing Issue of Environmental Protection.
• New Ways to Dispose of Radioactive Waste.
• Reasons to Continue Using Plastic Bottles.
• How to Improve Personal Protective Equipment.
• Disposable Face Masks: Impact on Ecology.
• Pros and Cons of Plastic Bags.
• How Recycling Can Influence the Economy.
• Recycling Problems and Its Solutions When comparing the past and present world, it is not wrong for one to argue that there are likelihoods of extinction of all living species if pollution continues with the present rate.
• Water Recycling Recycled water is obtained from waste water and contaminated water that has been subjected to thorough treatment to ensure that it is proper for use for different purposes.
• Importance of Recycling in Conservation of the Environment This piece of work looks at the different aspects associated with the process of recycling with much emphasis being given to the history of recycling and the facts associated with recycling process.
• Food Waste Recycling Benefits Through the analysis of Gupta and Gangopadhyay, it was noted that food waste was one of the leading preventable contributors towards the sheer amount of trash that winds up in many of the today’s landfills.
• “The Reign of Recycling” Article by Tierney With the growth and development of technologies and the industrial industry, the sphere of waste and garbage processing began to develop.
• Plastic Waste Materials Recycling Recycling of plastic wastes reduces the effects of plastics on the environment and promotes economic gain. It notes that we cannot sustain the current trends observed in plastics production, usages, and disposal due to the […]
• Recycling in Campus The objective is to minimize the potential waste of valuable resources. It also helps in the management of the use of new raw materials.
• Management Recycling of the Waste The requirement of this assignment was to collect and recycle different kinds of household items from the trash. In the first week five plastic cups were collected, which were kept in the storage area.
• Recycling Practices Among Latinos in the U.S. I wish to express my most profound gratitude to Norman Nimmo, the Municipal Recycling Coordinator for the City of Lawrence, for allowing me the opportunity to meet him to discuss the town’s new waste management […]
• Aluminium Cans Recycling The process of remelting the cans is much less expensive and less damaging to the environment than making new ones.”Creating new containers and making new aluminium involves electrolysis of aluminium oxide, which has to be […]
• Economics of Recycling: Benefits and Costs This is done with the intention of reducing the wastage of wasteful materials and also to try and avoid the excessive use of fresh raw materials and the reduction of energy use, environmental pollution, and […]
• Best Buy’s Recycling Service as Form Utility Due to the focus on the requirements and demands of the audience, particularly the plight to make the process of recycling more accessible for the general population, Best Buy’s new service is a prime example […]
• Public Speaking: Why Recycling Is Important The intention of such a program is to make “recycling of lead batteries easier and more profitable to recycle would lead to more extensive recycling programs.
• Recycling Tires in the UAE The purpose of this study is to prove that the recycling of used tires can be financially and environmentally beneficial for the UAE.
• Electronic Waste Management and Recycling In this modern era, going green is the main concern of companies and thus a stance for competition for the majority.
• Is Recycling Good for the Environment? Recycling is good for the environment and should be included in the daily routine of any person that cares about the planet and the future of our children.
• Plastic Bags, Effects, Recycling, and Reusability People have to think where the rest of the bags are and understand that this part of plastic continues making harm to nature.
• Does Recycling Harm the Environment? Recycling is the activity that causes the most damage to the environment. Summarizing the above, it is necessary to state that waste recycling has a negative connotation in relation to nature and the environment.
• The Breakdown and Recycling of Neurotransmitters Finally, drugs can also prevent the onset of action potentials by blocking the neural activity of the central and peripheral nervous systems.
• Recycling in Florida: Why Is It Important? As a way of cleaning the environment and helping the community, Florida has reintroduced the current recycling era, which began with the passing of the Florida Legislature.
• Mandatory Recycling Program in Murray Recycling solves this problem because it lessens the quantity of waste released into the environment, conserves valuable space, and minimizes the likelihood of health issues spreading in the city. Door-to-door collection, which aims for high […]
• Public Relations Campaign for Hewlett-Packard’s Recycling Program in Britain Part of the activities of this program is the sensitization of consumers on e-waste and the recycling of computers and their components.
• Newspaper Collection and General Recycling GR has a higher responsibility for quality due to the specifics of the general disposal and specifies the quantity and class of the material before collection.
• “Recycling in America Is a Mess” by Kimmelman It discusses the current situation with waste disposal in the United States, recycling of plastic, and emphasizes the problems in modern American society concerning these issues.
• Ms. Clare’s Interview on a Recycling Program She took the initiative to have programs that aimed to inform people of the importance of recycling.Ms. Clare was not happy with the pollution in her city, thus prompting her to start a program to […]
• Should Recycling Be Mandatory? To summarize, since recycling provides humanity with efficient solutions for the problem of energy consumption and business entities can be unethical in this aspect, it is essential to make recycling mandatory.
• Reign of Recycling and Waste Management Problem Despite the established opinion about the benefits of recycling, John Tierney, the author of the article, debates the advantages of this process.
• Attitude Towards Recycling During COVID-19 The topic of the research will be directly related to the field of environmental issues through the prism of the current global conditions.
• Plastic Recycling at a University: Effects of Number and Location of Bins In summary, in the article “Effects of number and location of bins on plastic recycling at a university,” the authors O’Connor et al.discuss the relevance of the practices that aim to enhance adherence to the […]
• Recycling Plastic Waste as Class Activity After summarizing the different types of plastics and their composition, students held discussions to describe the various uses of plastic, particularly in packaging.
• Aluminum Can Recycling: Eco-Efficiency The drawn cup is moved to another machine where a sleeve is used to hold the cup in a specific position; punch is then used to redraw the cup to attain a diameter of 6.6cm.
• Fabric Recycling: Environmental Collapse With the development of the textile industry and trends in fast fashion, cotton clothing is no longer a durable item in the consumer’s closet.
• Proper Recycling of E-Waste in the Southern New Jersey Community The essay will specifically look at e-waste management in the US. In particular, the essay will analyze the Southern New Jersey community in regards to the same.
• Recycling Plastic: Exploration of Opportunities With all the useful properties of recycled plastics, it is possible to produce high-quality goods that are sustainable and convenient in use.
• Paper Recycling: Environmental and Business Issues In order for paper to be properly recycled, the several types of paper must be separated because the different types of paper must be used for different types of products. This is the most common […]
• S&S Recycling Finance Options To choose the right financial strategy for the S&S Recycling Company, which is going to offer its litter-picking services for the neighborhood, as well as raw materials for furniture-producing companies, a careful evaluation of the […]
• Managing Natural Resources: Recycling At the same time, the discussion explains the benefits, which have the likelihood of attainment in recycling. Burning of papers promotes a higher level of forest and tree degradation in the process of production of […]
• The City of Adelaide Green Waste Recycling Centre The Green Waste Recycling Centre features in the city of Adelaide. The Adelaide Green Waste Recycling Centre is an initiative of the local government authority of the Adelaide City of Australia.
• Kuwait: Recycling of Carbon Dioxide Every educated and articulate opinion leader accepts the conventional wisdom that the unabated emission of greenhouse gases is slowly choking the earth, preventing heat from dissipating into space. For perspective, the chief “greenhouse gas” is […]
• Electronic Waste and Recycling Fees The purpose of this paper is to examine the consequences of e-waste disposal in various fields and social groups, the electronics recycling fee issue for North Dakota, and other measures to develop the current situation.
• Advanced Environmental Recycling Technologies Analysis AERT was established in the United States of America in the year 1988, and operates through a network of manufacturing plants located in the states of Oklahoma, Texas and several facilities in the state of […]
• Ensuring Healthy and Clean Environment: Importance of Recycling Ensuring that we have air to breathe, water to drink and that we do not create a planet which becomes the very cause for the end of the human race.
• Recycling Is Not Garbage The plastic recycling is the most common and the public is actively involved in collection of the materials to be recycled.
• Realizing the Emerging Importance of Recycling Also, surveying the data of where the trash end up around the world in Table 1, we can see that maximum number of trash goes to landfills and where space is a problem, incineration is […]
• Augusta Disposal & Recycling Inc.: Job Redesign and Workplace Rewards The position of the division excludes self-management in a way that the workers are not responsible for any decisions and consists merely of following the initiations of the superior personnel.
• Recycling the End of Life Vehicles This report examines the impacts of the insinuation of this legalization with respect to the design of the vehicle components in a vehicle to look at what is being prepared by the industry to meet […]
• Recycling Batteries: An In-Depth Look The first point is about the environmental impacts of the non-recycled used batteries and how these impacts affect people in their daily life. Batteries can be of two general types: the primary battery and the […]
• Recycling Plastic Packaging as an Enterprise For this purpose, two types of personalities that contribute to the waste rate most will have to be selected and analysed.
• Electronics Recycling Law of Illinois The law of 2017 defined the procedure for the work of companies engaged in the production of electronic equipment and established legislation that calls for the disposal of hazardous waste.
• Tri-County Recycling Project Analysis Therefore, by voicing the concern and pointing at the obvious flaws in the current design of the state policy towards waste management, the Tri-County Project should clearly be viewed as a major foot forward in […]
• Waste Management in Food Processing: Different Types of Wastes and Recycling Ways Even though countries use a variety of ways to manage waste, the research suggests that they are not sufficiently effective and the accumulating waste poses a danger to the well-being of the population.
• Ablution Water Recycling in Mosques To ensure a safe and fulfilling life for humans and animals on our planet, it is critical to preserve freshwater and avoid wasting it. Water is a critical element that is essential for the life […]
• Interface Inc.’s Products and Recycling Strategies Waste reduction is one of the major issues to solve as the size of landfills is alarming, and the biodiversity of the planet is in danger.
• Innovative Recycling Competition: Educating the Public However, for the initiative to be successful, it is pivotal to draw a sufficient number of participants to take part in the project.
• Improving Recycling Behavior in Dubai: Group Project This part of the proposal gives a detailed analysis of the first initiative that is expected to form the backbone of the final research project. A powerful plan will be used to implement the proposed […]
• Recycling Greywater for Irrigation and Landscaping Applications In the face of the current water shortage, there is a need to safeguard clean water resources by reusing water. The purpose of this project is to develop a greywater recycling system for landscape irrigation […]
• Sustainable Energy: Recycling of Cars in Germany The core theme of the paper is the comparative analysis of steel and aluminum and the advantages of these materials from the recycling perspective.
• Car Recycling: Direct and Indirect Energy Use It is also suggested that one of the potential dangers of lack of attention to how minimizing the weight of a car can reduce energy consumption and improve various aspects of the recycling process is […]
• Waste Recycling Technologies in Dubai The purpose of the current research is to investigate the trend of recycling in Dubai. To evaluate the statistical relationship between the monthly household income and the frequency of recycling for a household.
• Balance of Payments and Petrodollar Recycling The balance of payments in a country demonstrate the records of all the economic transactions that take place between the residents in a particular country and those living in other parts of the world for […]
• Dumfries Recycling Plant’s Sustainability This matter will help underline the importance of recycling in the society and attract the attention of the governmental authorities. In this case, being ‘green’ pertains to the characteristic of a product, which tends to […]
• Aluminum Recycling in Six Sigma Study in Kentucky By informing the readers about this, the case teaches us to understand the significant role of aluminum recycling in benefiting the economy of the US.
• Plastic Wastes Recycling Plant in the United Arab Emirates Sustainability of a project depends on the ability of the management unit to understand the environmental factors that may pose any form of threat to its normal operations.
• The Inventory Plan: PET-bottles Recycling For this reason, I want to point out that the most important steps, which the goal includes, are considered to be production of the item materials, transportation of the product, the product fabrication and postconsumer […]
• The Cost-Effectiveness of Recycling Plastic Most of the manufacturers have always considered the manufacturing of new plastic products to be more cost-effective as compared to the recycling of used materials.
• Ontario Waste Recycling Policy To understand the effectiveness of Ontario’s Waste Diversion Act, 2002, the Environment Accounts and Statistics Division of Statistics Canada has become a critical body for collecting, analyzing, and providing trends and practices on waste management […]
• S&S Recycling: A Business Plan S&S Recycling is a company that collects recycled material and offers it to the companies that produce their goods from recycled resources.
• Recycling Company Risks and Opportunities A close proximity to the key target customers and a reasonable pricing policy coupled with the quality of the product will provide a smooth ground for the organization to commence its growth.
• Pontrelli Recycling Inc’s Project Management The first amongst the planning activities is the fact that project managers must comprehend the firm’s economic goals and other objectives to enable them align project operations to financial goals.
• Recycling in the UAE Thus, the selection of the materials is to go through several steps: An engineer is to consider all materials and find out which materials can be used according to the design requirements; The materials’ attributes […]
• Project Management: A Platform Project for Waste Recycling in SMEs and Public Companies Seeing how the manufacturing process includes the location of the resources and the transportation of the given resources to the end customer and, in fact, cannot be viewed outside the manufacturing process, it will be […]
• Nuclear Energy Usage and Recycling The resulting energy is used to power machinery and generate heat for processing purposes. The biggest problem though is that of energy storage, which is considered to be the most crucial requirement for building a […]
• Recycling Firm Business Plan The business will be called “Greensipi” – a plastic recycling firm that will be responsible for number of products and services.
• To Use or not to Reuse: A Case for Recycling Since getting people to reduce the amount of trash they produce may be hard to achieve, recycling is the most feasible solution to the problem.
• Recycling of Wastewater for Agricultural Use in Arid Areas Given that in these arid areas water is a rare commodity, recycling of wastewaters has been considered as one of the ways that can be used to increase the amount of water for irrigation for […]
• The Dilemma Surrounding Recycling One of the arguments used by recycling supporters is that the government takes full responsibility of the funding of recycling activities.”Government supports lots of services that the free market would not provide, such as the […]
• Recycling’s Management and Potential Throughout the process of ten weeks various types of plastic materials had been collected and stored so that when we resell these items after ten long weeks, we are able to easily tell the difference […]
• What Are the Seven Benefits of Recycling?
• How Can the Recycling of Concrete Waste Be Increased in the UK?
• What Is the Future of Recycling?
• Does Teaching School Children About Recycling Reduce Household Waste?
• Why Reducing and Reusing Are Much Better Than Recycling?
• How Does Recycling Affect the Environment?
• How Can Waste Recycling Help Overcome an Emerging Threat to the Environment?
• How Does Recycling Work?
• Are You Needlessly Recycling Emotional Pain?
• Why Is Recycling So Important?
• Does Recycling Improve Information Usefulness of Income?
• Why Should Recycling Not Be Banned?
• How Does Recycling Effect the Environment?
• Are Recycling People Also Saving?
• What Are the Pros and Cons of Recycling?
• Why Recycling Helps Solve Climate Change Issues?
• How Does the Environment Benefit From Recycling?
• How Can Communities and Governments Encourage Recycling
• Should Recycling Used Materials Necessary?
• What Are the Main Benefits of Recycling?
• Can Public Construction and Demolition Data Describe Trends in Building Material Recycling?
• Does Recycling Benefit the Environment?
• Does Waste Management Policy Crowd Out Social and Moral Motives for Recycling?
• Why Did Sewage Recycling Schemes Claim a Great Deal of Attention in Mid-Victorian Britain?
• What Is the Biggest Problem With Recycling?
• Why Is Recycling No Longer Profitable?
• What Explains the Intention to Bring Mobile Phones for Recycling?
• Are Our Recycling Efforts Worth the Trouble?
• How Recycling Reduces Greenhouse Effect?
• What Will Happen if We Don’t Recycle?
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• Chicago (N-B)

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Home — Essay Samples — Environment — Environmental Protection — Recycling

Essays on Recycling

Hook examples for recycling essays, "turning trash into treasure" hook.

"Recycling is the art of turning trash into treasure. Explore how recycling not only benefits the environment but also has economic and creative potential."

"The Urgency of Recycling: A Wake-Up Call" Hook

"Our planet faces a recycling crisis. Present alarming statistics about waste and the urgent need for recycling to mitigate the environmental impact."

"Recycling as a Lifestyle Choice" Hook

"Recycling isn't just an activity; it's a lifestyle choice. Discuss how individuals and communities can adopt sustainable practices and embrace recycling as a daily habit."

"From Trash to Resource: The Recycling Process" Hook

"Take a journey through the recycling process, from collection and sorting to transformation into new products. Highlight the innovative technologies behind recycling."

"Recycling Myths Debunked" Hook

"Dispelling common misconceptions about recycling is essential. Address myths and provide accurate information to encourage more people to participate in recycling efforts."

"Recycling Success Stories" Hook

"Share inspiring stories of communities, companies, or individuals who have made a significant impact through recycling initiatives. Celebrate their achievements and the ripple effect of their actions."

"Recycling for Future Generations" Hook

"Recycling is an investment in our planet's future. Discuss the importance of passing down eco-conscious values and recycling practices to future generations."

The Importance of Recycling for College Students

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Recycling

Recycling benefits: what happens if we don’t continue to recycle, importance of recycling and the reasons of why we should recycle, the reasons of why recycling should be required and benefits of recycling, let us write you an essay from scratch.

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Recycling: Working for a Better World

The benefits of recycling for enhancing environmental, recycling should be mandatory in the united states, recycling is harming the environment, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

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The Unintended Consequences of The Plastic Straw Ban

Global warming and solutions to it, addressing the menace of littering, the truth about recycling, advantages and disadvantages of different types of recycling, the advantages of recycling and its impact on the environment, green strategies for hotels: estimation of recycling benefits , myp personal project: sustainable reusage of motorcycles, importance of cardboard boxes, recycling in the automotive industry, scrap metal, recycling: an essential practice for sustainable living, me as part of my community: our problems and preferred solutions, recycling should be mandatory - there is no easier option, the history of modern recycling waste: ann byer’s book review, recycling waste in south arabia: analysis of paper industry, recycling waste is the best way to improve our environment, recycling waste is the best way to improve environment in australia, the debate over mandatory recycling, efficient waste management: embracing the three rs.

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept.

Recycling has been a common practice for most of human history, with recorded advocates as far back as Plato in the fourth century BC. In pre-industrial times, there is evidence of scrap bronze and other metals being collected in Europe and melted down for continuous reuse. Paper recycling was first recorded in 1031 when Japanese shops sold repulped paper. In Britain dust and ash from wood and coal fires was collected by "dustmen" and downcycled as a base material for brick making.

All recyclables will fall into 3 main types of recycling: primary, secondary and tertiary. Additionally recycling in classified based on material: waste paper and cardboard, plastic recycling, metal recycling, WEEE recycling (electronic devices), wood recycling, glass recycling, clothing and textile, bricks and inert waste recycling.

Recycling is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reducing energy use, air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling).

The average person generates over 4 pounds of trash every day and about 1.5 tons of solid waste per year. A glass container can go from a recycling bin to a store shelf in as few as 30 days. Recycling 1 glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours. Enough energy is saved each year by recycling steel to supply Los Angeles with electricity for almost 10 years. Recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees.

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Essay on Recycling

Students are often asked to write an essay on Recycling in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Recycling

Understanding recycling.

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into reusable objects. It helps to reduce the usage of raw materials, which can save energy and prevent pollution.

Importance of Recycling

Recycling is vital for our planet. It reduces the need for landfilling and incineration. By recycling, we can conserve natural resources like timber, water, and minerals.

Types of Recycling

There are various types of recycling, such as paper, plastic, glass, metal, and electronic waste recycling. Each type has its own recycling process.

In conclusion, recycling is an essential practice for a sustainable environment. Everyone should participate in it.

Also check:

• 10 Lines on Recycling
• Paragraph on Recycling
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250 Words Essay on Recycling

Introduction.

Recycling, a practice that has been incorporated into our daily lives, plays a pivotal role in environmental sustainability. It is an efficient method to minimize waste, conserve resources, and mitigate environmental degradation.

The Necessity of Recycling

The increasing consumerism and rapid industrialization have led to an escalation in waste generation. The disposal of this waste, often non-biodegradable, poses severe threats to our environment. Recycling, therefore, emerges as a viable solution, transforming waste into reusable materials, reducing landfill burden and pollution.

Recycling and Resource Conservation

Recycling promotes resource conservation. Natural resources, such as timber, water, and minerals, are finite. Through recycling, we can reuse materials, thereby reducing the strain on these resources. For instance, recycling paper reduces deforestation, preserving biodiversity.

Energy Efficiency

Recycling is also energy-efficient. The process of extracting and refining raw materials for production consumes more energy than recycling. Aluminum recycling, for example, uses 95% less energy than producing it from raw materials.

Challenges and Solutions

Despite its benefits, recycling faces several challenges, including economic viability and contamination issues. However, with advanced technologies, recycling processes can be made more efficient and cost-effective. Education and awareness can also play a significant role in overcoming these challenges.

In conclusion, recycling is a crucial component of sustainable living. It not only conserves resources and energy but also mitigates environmental degradation. Despite the challenges, with collective effort and technological advancements, we can make recycling a more effective and universal practice.

500 Words Essay on Recycling

Recycling, a process of converting waste materials into reusable substances, is an essential component of modern waste reduction strategies. The practice is not a mere environmental fad, but rather a crucial measure to mitigate the adverse effects of waste on our planet. This essay delves into the importance of recycling, its benefits, and the challenges that impede its full implementation.

The Importance of Recycling

The importance of recycling cannot be overstated. As our consumer society continues to produce an immense amount of waste, the need for effective waste management strategies becomes increasingly critical. Recycling offers a solution to this problem by transforming waste into useful materials, thereby reducing the volume of waste that ends up in our landfills and oceans.

Moreover, recycling conserves natural resources. By reusing materials, we reduce the demand for virgin resources, which in turn helps to preserve our natural environment. This is particularly significant in the context of non-renewable resources, such as certain metals and fossil fuels.

Benefits of Recycling

Recycling carries a multitude of benefits, both environmental and economic. Environmentally, recycling reduces the strain on our planet’s resources. It decreases the need for raw materials, which means less deforestation and less disruption to habitats. Additionally, recycling saves energy. The process of extracting, refining, and transporting raw materials is energy-intensive, and recycling can significantly cut down on these energy requirements.

Economically, recycling can create jobs and stimulate economic growth. The recycling industry requires a vast workforce for collection, transportation, processing, and manufacturing of recycled goods. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, recycling and reuse activities in the U.S. accounted for 681,000 jobs in 2017, demonstrating the potential for economic benefits.

Challenges to Recycling

Despite its obvious benefits, recycling is not without its challenges. One of the primary issues is the lack of proper recycling infrastructure in many areas. Without convenient access to recycling facilities, individuals are less likely to recycle.

Another challenge lies in the complexity of the recycling process. Not all materials are equally recyclable, and some, like certain types of plastic, can be more costly and energy-intensive to recycle than to produce anew. This complexity can lead to confusion among consumers about what can and cannot be recycled, further hindering recycling efforts.

In conclusion, recycling is a critical component of sustainable living and waste management. Its environmental and economic benefits underscore its importance in our society. However, to fully harness these benefits, we must address the challenges that stand in the way of effective recycling. This includes developing better recycling infrastructure, improving public education about recycling, and researching more efficient recycling technologies. As we continue to grapple with the realities of our waste problem, recycling remains a crucial part of the solution.

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Home Essay Examples Environment Recycling

Recycling And Waste Management: Opinion Essay

• Category Environment
• Subcategory Environmental Protection
• Topic Recycling

Waste management is a very important factor in today’s society. Due to the increase of population in the world, the amount of waste that is wasted in also increasing every day. This increase in waste could mean that the lives of many people will be affected in a negative way. Waste is dangerous to society because large amounts of it could spread various diseases, which means that many people’s lives will be put in danger. One of the best ways to reduce waste is recycling or composting.

Recycling is taking useless items that people do not use anymore and creating useful products that people would want to use. Recycling is made in order to prevent energy usage and consumption of the raw materials. The main idea of recycling is to reduce energy usage, reduce the pollution that is found in the air and water, and reserve raw materials that we might need in the future.(Rinkesh) Here in Albania, waste management is at a very low level. Almost nobody recycles, and there are not enough campaigns in order to encourage people into acting right for the environment and contributing to a better life for them and who will come after. (European Topic Center)

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There are different types of recycling, some of which include paper recycling, plastic recycling, glass recycling, oil recycling, battery recycling and many more. As there are a lot of materials which could be recycled, but there are not a lot of people willing to help, there are a lot of materials, which people do not bother recycling, since it is very hard to find a team of people who will take the specific material that you are willing to recycle, and most of the time, recycling is too much of a hustle. Many materials are more dangerous to throw in the trash than others. One material that is very controversial inside and outside of Albania is batteries.

There are little to no companies which provide an easy and convenient way to recycle batteries. Batteries include toxic material, which although is not as big of a deal now as it was years ago when the amount of toxic material was much larger. Batteries are part of almost everything in our life, some of which include cell phones, laptops, cameras, and almost every electronic device you can think of. Many of batteries in these devices contain harmful materials that can leak into the air and water supply when they are dumped in the trash(Waste Recycling). In other countries, there are a lot of places that have helped the issue in other places, such as the US, where they have different locations that will take your batteries(Kirschner). In Albania, there is no building that has the reason for recycling batteries. Calling up the very few companies that recycle your old batteries, having to meet them, and giving them the batteries in Albania is too much work for just wanting to do the right thing. If this issue grows, even more, there could be a lot of people affected, especially those who live close to where the garbage is taken in order to burn.

The target audience I have chosen is my family because I have noticed, that during the last few years, we have been throwing all the batteries we do not use anymore. I think I should help with this issue because I want my generation and the next to have a healthier lifestyle and I want to help the people who want to recycle but can not find any people who are willing to help and get left with the choice of just throwing the trash out. As there are almost no companies that are willing to help with the issue presented regarding batteries, I would think it would be quite beneficial to create a solution in order to have a much healthier future.

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IELTS Writing Task 2 Planning Practice: Opinion Essay – Recycling Topic

Here’s another video lesson from my Task 2 planning series. Follow this video and the practice in here to improve your ability to think of good ideas for IELTS Task 2 writing.

Reader Interactions

April 3, 2017 at 12:23 pm

I found these videos really helpful. I am a nurse and working in Dubai now. I wrote IELTS 8 times earlier and preparing for 9th attempt. Recently my scores were L-7,R-7,W-6.5 AND S-7. I was getting low scores for speaking all the time.6.5. my writing score were always 7/7.5 .But after improving my speaking skills writing score got low. Could you add a video which explains about the types of essays and some model answers of different types. Thank you somuch

April 3, 2017 at 6:22 pm

Hi Joby! I’m glad they’ve been helpful. I’ll definitely put together a video about the different essay types 🙂

January 11, 2019 at 6:29 am

Hello dear you may apply for THE UK NHS because they have reduced point 5 for the writing section you may go to the NMC Website and make sure because they are accepting 7 in 3 sections and 6.5 in writing. Good luck.!

January 11, 2019 at 10:11 pm

Hi Fatima. Do you have any idea if this new requirement only for NMC or for GMC as well? Many thanks.

March 31, 2018 at 7:28 am

Pleased to watch your video thanx

August 17, 2018 at 7:01 pm

Currently, i am taking IELTS preparation course and expect to get band score above 7. I’ve found that writing eassy is very hard for me, so how can i get improved my writing skills?

January 10, 2019 at 4:30 pm

Hi there! Thanks for putting this video up. I used to teach the General Paper for the GCE ‘A’ levels and am now finding out more about teaching writing for IELTS. Based on my background, it seems like your current essay plan answers the question ‘What are the different solutions to encourage recycling’ rather than ‘To what extent are laws required to encourage recycling’. I feel that you have listed the different solutions rather than evaluated HOW FAR laws can work vs other social/ psychological solutions. But of course, I am not familiar with the marking schemes for IELTS writing, perhaps the requirements are different.

January 10, 2019 at 4:47 pm

Sorry so I guess my purpose for commenting is, whether based on your experience, do IELTS markers pay close attention to these key terms such as ‘How Far’ and ‘To what extent’, or are you not required to evaluate as long as you respond to the topic? Thanks.

January 18, 2021 at 4:55 am

It’s really helpful. I need the sample 50 answer book.

How can i get that? Please help me… My mail:– [email protected]

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Moscow’s Trash Reform Equates Incineration With Recycling

Moscow city authorities will consider trash incineration to be a form of recycling, according to the city’s trash reform plan for 2020-2029 published Monday.

Moscow’s practice of exporting its waste to surrounding regions has riled Russian citizens over the past year, while nationwide trash reforms threaten to shut down garbage collectors in several regions. The trash crisis continues to intensify, with Moscow expected to generate 8 million tons of waste in 2019 compared to 7.8 million tons in 2018.

According to the document, Moscow’s trash will be disposed of in landfills or by recycling. The plan considers the burning of trash to be a form of recycling as long as it generates heat or electric energy, despite a law that would allow this still going through the State Duma .

The plan has been met with resistance among environmentalists, who say that burning trash will release harmful toxins and pollutants that never decompose into the environment. Alexey Kiselev, a zero-waste expert at Greenpeace, said he considers trash incineration to be an “ecological and technological absurdity in the 21st century.”

“It prevents the construction of a working recycling system and actually solving the problem [of waste],” he told The Moscow Times.

The plan also doesn’t include strategies for reducing the overall amount of waste generated. 

According to Moscow’s plan, most of the city’s trash will be shipped out of the city to landfills in the Kaluga, Vladimir and Moscow regions. 

Though there’s no mention of the controversial Shiyes landfill in the Arkhangelsk region where Moscow previously planned to ship its trash, it could be included in Moscow’s plan at any time if the authorities decide they need it, Kiselev told The Moscow Times.

The European Commission has advised against building trash incinerators, saying it equals a refusal to implement recycling facilities, Boris Morgunov, the head the ecology department at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, told the Vedomosti business daily Monday.

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Clashes Break Out Over Plans to Clear Moscow Forest

Radiation Spike Detected Near Moscow Highway Construction Site

Moscow’s Restaurant Leftovers to Go On Sale With First Food Waste-Cutting Project

How Russia’s Attempt to Solve Its Trash Crisis Is Backfiring

The Spoils of Russia’s Trash Reforms Go to the Well-Connected

As a teenager during the Second World War, Mikhail Gorelikov joined a partisan detachment that fought the German Wehrmacht in the forests of occupied Belarus. After the war, he worked all over the Soviet Union: in far northern Karelia, in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, and in the gold and uranium mines of Central Asia.

Forty years ago, he settled down to what he thought would be a quiet life in a cozy wooden house near the town of Alexandrov, about two hours northeast of Moscow. The tiny home is furnished with little more than a stove and bed, its walls decorated with icons of saints and holy men.

But last year, private garbage trucks started bringing mountains of trash from Moscow and dumping it in a small nearby landfill, which has ballooned to the size of a multi-story building. An overpowering stench now hangs over the entire city. And 90-year-old Gorelikov, whom locals affectionately call “Grandpa Misha,” is back to a life on the front lines.

After multiple demonstrations proved ineffective, a group of angry locals set up an informal checkpoint at the entrance of the landfill. Drinking hot tea on cold nights and sustaining themselves with supplies brought by supporters, they check the documents of each arriving garbage truck so they can turn back any coming from Moscow. Grandpa Misha comes to stand guard there almost every day. The short, hardy old man has become a celebrated local symbol of resistance.

“All the villages around this landfill, the city is nearby, there’s nothing to breathe,” he exclaimed at a recent protest, drawing enthusiastic applause from hundreds of his fellow Alexandrovites. “There’s no air. The water is also poisoned. It used to be beautiful, crystal clear water. And now you can’t drink it. Everyone buys water in bottles … As soon as spring starts, a stream of rats goes into these villages. It’s unbearable.”

Alexandrov is just one hotspot of Russia’s anti-landfill movement, which has flared up across the country in recent years. In 2017, President Vladimir Putin ordered the closure of Moscow’s largest landfill, Kuchino, setting off a surge of private operators trucking trash into nearby regions. The government enacted laws meant to close many of Russia’s old landfills and to introduce modern incineration and recycling technologies.

Each of the country’s regions was divided into “waste management zones,” and companies were invited to bid on tenders to handle waste in each zone. The winning companies received 10- to 15-year contracts, which since 2019 have been paid through a new “waste removal” line item on local citizens’ utility bills. These payments have grown significantly in some regions. The result has been an outbreak of angry protests in a country where public demonstrations that go against Moscow’s wishes are relatively rare.

Grandpa Misha says he hopes the protests will catch the attention of Putin, whom he has considered sending a strongly worded letter complaining about the landfill near his house.

“It should help, if you write the president!” he said after one particularly well-attended anti-garbage protest. “There were so many people today! Thousands of people! Does he not have any brains at all? I’m not even talking about a conscience.”

But what Grandpa Misha didn’t know is that the landfill that fills his house with fumes, and the company that piles it with mountains of garbage from Moscow, are both owned by a man known to represent the interests of Arkady Rotenberg, an oligarch who has prospered due to his close friendship with Putin.

IStories, OCCRP’s Russian member center, learned this as part of a year-long investigation into the bidding process through which the regional waste operators were selected. In multiple cases, reporters found, these companies’ beneficiaries are connected to the president’s friends and associates. To obscure these connections, the companies belong to offshore structures that can be directly traced only to proxies in faraway countries.

Elsewhere in the Moscow region, a company that operates a controversial incinerator is linked to Sergei Chemezov, another old Putin friend who heads Rostec, a major state technology conglomerate. Other winners of incineration tenders — many of which were competitive only on paper — are also linked to Chemezov’s company.

As a whole, IStories analyzed waste management tenders that, over the next 10-15 years, are worth over 2 trillion rubles ($28 billion). The four largest operators in the country are all associated with Putin or other senior officials:

• Contracts worth more than 165 billion rubles ($2.4 billion) in the city of Moscow, the Moscow and Irkutsk regions, and Tatarstan went to people close to Sergei Chemezov .
• Contracts worth more than 107 billion rubles ($1.5 billion) in the city of Moscow and in the Tulsk, Yaroslav, Vladimir, and Moscow regions went to Khartia, a company that belongs to Igor Chaika , the son of Russia’s former prosecutor general Yury Chaika.
• Companies associated with Mark Omelnitski, who represented the offshore interests of oligarch and Putin sparring partner Arkady Rotenberg and his son Igor , will earn over 88 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) from contracts in the city of Moscow and the Moscow region.
• Nearly 63 billion rubles ($900 million) will go to Upravlenie Otkhodami, a company that will manage waste in the Volgograd, Murmansk, Nizhegorodsk, and Saratovsk regions. According to the Russian Forbes , the company is part of Russia’s largest group of pension funds, of which the main beneficiary is Yury Kovalchuk , an old friend of Putin and his former neighbor in the Ozero lakeside gated community .

The IStories investigation has also yielded evidence of dodgy waste contracts that have benefitted regional authorities all across the country, and led to higher waste disposal fees for ordinary citizens. These stories (see box) are available in Russian.

🔗 Regional Waste Stories

Before Russia’s waste reforms, trash was handled by local municipalities, which charged a general payment from citizens for all the services they provided. Starting last year, a new line item — “removal of municipal solid waste” — appeared on people’s utility bills. For Russia as a whole, the total payments amount to over 200 billion rubles (around US$3 billion) per year. In many regions, this money goes into the pockets of people who are connected to local authorities, including relatives of prosecutors, governors, mayors, and legislators from the ruling United Russia party. Click here to read on IStories .

According to an analysis by IStories, at least 83 percent of tenders for regional waste operators, the vast majority of which were held since 2017, have taken place with no competition. In each of these cases, the private bidders received contracts at close to the maximum allowable prices, leading to higher fees for local residents. Click here to read on IStories .

In at least 11 of Russia’s regions, waste processing tenders worth over 122 billion rubles ($1.7 billion) were won by companies that carried out no commercial activity or had one or zero employees. Click here to read on IStories .

Hiding in Gibraltar

The land under the Alexandrov landfill, which is state property, is being rented by a company called EkoLine-Vladimir. The landfill itself is operated by another company called Ekoresource.

Both belong to EkoLine, a company registered in Moscow that operates a waste sorting facility on a large thoroughfare in the city’s north. This address is also listed as the origin point of the trucks being stopped by the “people’s patrol” volunteers, they said.

Moscow’s official waste management plan confirms that trash from the capital’s northern and central districts must first be sorted at the EkoLine facility and then sent for disposal to “facilities in the Vladimir region.”

🔗 Conflicting Plans

When the protests against the Alexandrov landfill first started, the governor of the Vladimir region, Vladimir Sipyagin, did not acknowledge that waste from Moscow was being brought in at all.

Only when the “people’s patrol” began did he decide to protect people’s interests in court. The city’s prosecutors filed a lawsuit against the companies that operate the landfill.

Though the waste management plan for the Moscow region specifically calls for waste from four of the capital’s districts to be sent to the Vladimir region, the local plan does not allow for waste to be brought in from the outside.

On this basis, the local authorities won their lawsuit at the end of May. Meanwhile, the “people’s patrol” is still manning the checkpoint in fear that trucks from Moscow will return.

According to public procurement data, EkoLine has a 15-year contract to transport waste out of Moscow’s northern and central districts. The company’s owners earn money every step of the way a piece of garbage takes from a Moscow trash container to its disposal 500 meters from Grandpa Misha’s house.

The EkoLine group is among the top three beneficiaries of Russia’s waste reforms. Companies in the group have received waste management contracts in several districts in the Moscow region, worth more than 88 billion rubles ($1.2 billion).

EkoLine’s owners are not disclosed in any public records. The company has a complex ownership structure involving several offshore firms that stretch from Russia to Hong Kong, Gibraltar, and New Zealand.

Following these links, reporters found that the majority owner of this entire holding is a U.K. citizen named Mark Omelnitski.

That name won’t mean much to residents of Alexandrov, but it is well known to journalists. In the Panama Papers , an archive of leaked documents from thousands of offshore firms, Omelnitski was listed as the nominal director of at least three offshore companies that once belonged to Arkady Rotenberg and his son Igor.

🔗 Why a Nominal Director?

For those seeking to keep their wealth unknown, one of the main advantages of establishing a company in an offshore jurisdiction is the ability to hide behind a proxy — a lawyer, an accountant, or a trusted but little-known associate — as the company’s owner or director. Some people, including professionals in the offshore business services industry, register as owners of hundreds or even thousands of companies. But in other cases, a particular proxy might serve only a few companies linked to a specific business interest or group of people. Reporters who manage to gain access to these internal documents can piece together these secretive networks to expose hidden connections of wealth and power.

Arkady Rotenberg is one of Vladimir Putin’s closest and oldest friends. In the 20 years since his old judo sparring partner ascended to power in Russia, Rotenberg has become one of Russia’s wealthiest men thanks to profitable deals with the government. Companies that belong to him and his son, Igor, collect fees from long-haul truckers, receive lucrative contracts from the state oil giant Gazprom, and made billions building Olympic facilities in Sochi and a new bridge to the occupied peninsula of Crimea.

No connection between the Rotenbergs and one of the country’s largest waste disposal conglomerates has ever been reported, and the family has not been known to have any connection to the waste disposal business.

Aside from Omelnitski, there are other facts in support of this connection. Among the chain of offshore firms in EkoLine’s corporate structure is a Gibraltar company called MP Enterprises. A 2016 document from the Gibraltar corporate register listed a man from Moscow named Dmitry Protsenko as this company’s director. The document describes Protsenko as the head of the legal department of NPV Engineering, a company sanctioned by the United States that belongs to Arkady Rotenberg’s son, Igor.

In addition, an official within the Russian government who is in charge of the country’s waste reforms had an immediate answer to the question of who is really behind EkoLine: “The Rotors.” This is a nickname for the Rotenberg family used by well-connected Russians.

The Rotenbergs do not themselves appear in the corporate structure of any EkoLine company, and a representative of Arkady Rotenberg denied that anybody from the family has any connection to EkoLine. The company itself made no response to reporters’ questions.

“The Dirtiest Incinerator in Europe”

Vladimir Silin, 79, is the head of the tiny village of Svistyagino, to the southeast of Moscow. Only when the “people’s patrol” began did he decide to protect the interests of his region’s citizens in court.

He’s seen plenty of action elsewhere, too. Now in retirement, he’s sunk his savings into a house on his property.

“I put in 20 monthly salaries after leaving the armed forces,” he says. “I put in all my Chernobyl earnings. I put in my Antarctic money … I was in Antarctica three times. Once I wintered there for a year and a half.”

Now, Silin is at a loss. Less than a kilometer from his house, in a village that has no more than two dozen residents, the largest waste incineration plant in Russia is being built. A construction crane and the frame of the future furnace are clearly visible from his property.

Local residents learned about the construction plans in 2016. Initially, the facility, which can process 700,000 tons of garbage a year, was going to be built near the city of Voskresensk. But after a spirited local protest, officials decided to move the plant. Now, the organizer of that protest, Alexei Kholkin, has come to Svistyagino to help locals there fight the construction of the same facility.

The activists have received multiple threats from local police and from unknown men, and Kholkin has been arrested twice. Silin said that one of their associates from a neighboring village had grenades planted on him during a search. A criminal case was launched, but there have been no charges yet.

Aside from holding public protests, the activists have tried to get the developer, a company called AGK-1, to disclose project documentation related to the incinerator, so that they can understand whether it presents a health and safety risk.

The company refused, and it took two years of wrangling in court before they finally received the documents at the end of last year. After having them analyzed by experts, they held a press conference in March to publish the first results.

According to the analysis, the Svistyagino facility will emit about 2,500 tons of pollutants into the atmosphere per year, equivalent to the emissions of about 500 automobiles.

Studies in Italy and Spain have shown that people who live near waste incinerators in those countries have a higher risk of dying of various cancers. But Russian incineration plants are far worse, experts said.

“The emissions of one of our facilities is 30 times greater than the emissions from the most modern Swiss facility [and is] … equivalent to the emissions of all of Switzerland,” said Valery Sosnovtsev, a physicist at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute who studied the documentation for the Svistyagino incinerator, at a press conference. He predicted that the first cases of cancer caused by the plant would appear within five years.

“In terms of emissions, this turns out to be the dirtiest incinerator in Europe,” said Maxim Porokhov, an environmental specialist for the All-Russia People’s Front, a civic movement led by Putin.

This March, the Russian Academy of Sciences issued its own stark evaluation of Russian waste incinerators: “The condition for burning trash without preliminary sorting … in the circumstances of our country are unacceptable.”

“No Other Solution Exists”

A very different evaluation of the performance of Russian incinerators was offered by the head of Rostec, the state technology and defense conglomerate that has helped build and promote them.

Those under construction in Russia are “the highest quality [and] produce minimal emissions. On the level of exhaust from modern automobiles,” Chemezov told Kommersant in a 2017 interview .

In this and other public interviews , Chemezov has stressed the urgency of quickly establishing new incinerators in Russia, especially around Moscow, to end the practice of piling waste in landfills. “Only about 10 percent [of trash] is incinerated and recycled [in Russia],” he said. “The rest is buried — on this metric we’re somewhere on the level of African countries.”

Incinerators, he said, are the only option. “No other solution exists. No one anywhere in the world has thought of anything else.”

But he might have other reasons to tout trash incineration. Reporters found that the beneficiaries of the company behind the Svistyagino incinerator are close to Chemezov.

Though Rostec owns 7.3 percent of AGK-1, a much larger share of the company, 35 percent, is held by two men from Chemezov’s inner circle: Sergei Skvortsov and Andrei Shipelov.

Skvortsov joined Rostec as Managing Director for Investments in 2013 and was later appointed one of the conglomerate’s deputy directors. His wife, Yulia Skvortsova, has been described as a close friend of the Chemezov family.

Three sources within the waste industry — a government official, a former law enforcement officer, and a Chemezov acquaintance — told IStories reporters that Shipelov represents the interests of Chemezov’s wife.

In an extensive interview with IStories, Shipelov acknowledged that he knew Chemezov, but denied that the senior official had any hidden interest in RT-Invest, the company that owns AGK-1, other than through his official position as the head of Rostec. He said he himself had invited Skvortsov, the Chemezov family friend, to partner in the company with him.

“When [Skvortsov] had left the state corporation, I invited him to make an investment,” he said. “We needed capital … I asked him not only to invest his own money, but to try to attract additional investors. … Many international investors see Sergei [Skvortsov] as one of [the country’s] most serious professionals.”

Shipelov said that his “philosophy,” and that of his company, was that all of Russia’s landfills would someday be closed and replaced by recycling plants and incinerators. He described the protests against his incinerators as being instigated by people who had vested interests in landfills.

“We know very well who’s behind these protests. Of course, there were people who didn’t trust us. But there were also people who intentionally worked to lengthen the construction time of these complexes, or didn’t build them at all. They generously funded these protests. These are people who own the old landfills.”

Shipelov said his incinerators would pose no health risks, explaining that the opponents of his facilities were incorrectly interpreting the numbers in the official documents. These, he said, indicated the maximum levels of harmful emissions, not the actual levels that the functioning plants would create.

Sergei Chemezov did not respond to requests for comment sent to Rostec. But the company’s press office wrote that the company uses advanced technology that is in use elsewhere in the world, that the project documentation for its five plants “passed all levels of mandatory state expertise,” six studies by public organizations, and that “all projects received positive conclusions.” The company also refuted the assumption that Sergei Skvortsov may represent the interests of the Chemezov family in RT-Invest. A spokesman for the state corporation said that, before moving to Rostec, Skvortsov was involved in attracting investments to the largest Russian companies, and his investments in RT-Invest represented his own money.

At the end of last year, Putin signed a law that raised the priority of incineration as a method of waste disposal in Russia. Thanks in part to this law, people in Sergei Chemezov’s orbit could eventually build waste incinerators not only in Svistyagino, but in other Russian regions. So far five facilities are under construction, four in the Moscow region and one in Tatarstan. But in mid-May, the government corporations Rosatom, Rostec, and VEB.RF signed an agreement to build 25 more such facilities “in Russia’s main tourist centers and agglomerations with populations of over 500,000 people.”

No Competition

The involvement of close Chemezov associates in Russia’s waste processing industry doesn’t end with incinerators.

On April 19, 2018, the environmental ministry of the Moscow region announced the results of a tender to select a waste management operator for an area to the north of the city that includes the historic town of Sergiev Posad.

The winning company, RASTRIM-MO, RASTRIM-MO now goes by the name “Sergiev-Posad Regional Operator” received a 10-year contract worth 45 billion rubles ($650 million) to remove and process waste from several towns in the region.

On first glance, the procedure appeared competitive, since another company called Spetstrans also submitted a bid. But according to publicly available tender documents, Spetstrans did not attach a single piece of legal documentation to its application.

Since this documentation is mandatory, Spetstrans was excluded from the bidding process and RASTRIM-MO won the contract. In fact, it was a “competition” in name only: Andrei Shipelov, the Chemezov associate, was a co-owner of both firms.

In two other cases on that very same day, companies partially owned by Shipelov won waste removal contracts in two other waste management zones in the Moscow region.

Asked about these arrangements, Shipelov said that his goal was not to create a false sense of competition, but to gain more control over the process. “We often put forward two or three companies for the same tender. It depends on which company will receive financing from the bank … When you submit your application, you simultaneously negotiate with the banks … [If there are other competitors] I can instruct one of my companies to lower the price.”

Nevertheless, in three tenders won by Shipelov’s companies in the Moscow region, the final prices were just 0.17 percent lower than the maximum.

And it’s not just the Moscow region. Of 253 regional waste management tenders analyzed by journalists, 210, or 83 percent, took place with no competition at all, according to reporters’ calculations.

Back in Svistyagino, as the giant new incinerator rises not far from the Chernobyl survivor’s modest home, there appears to be little hope that ordinary Russian citizens won’t be the losers.

With their appeals to the president having achieved nothing, they had nothing left to do but reach out to an even higher power: the Almighty.

“You know, the construction has begun,” says Silin, the village head. “Our appeals to the president were pointless. So there, at the edge of the village, we built a three-meter-tall cross. We put it there, lit it up. Maybe God will help us stop the construction.”

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10 books to add to your reading list in April

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Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fiction and nonfiction, to consider for your April reading list.

April’s book releases cover some difficult topics, including Salman Rushdie discussing his 2022 maiming, Leigh Bardugo’s fiction about the dark arts and Ada Limón’s poetry anthology about our fragile world. However, like April, there is also sunshine: Leif Enger’s wild Great Lakes love story, Helen Tworkov’s beautiful memoir of Buddhism and a collection of the inimitable Maggie Nelson’s essays. Happy reading, happy spring!

I Cheerfully Refuse: A Novel By Leif Enger Grove Press: 336 pages, $28 (April 2)

An unusual and meaningful surprise awaits readers of Enger’s latest, which takes place largely on Lake Superior, as a man named Rainy tries to reunite with his beloved wife, Lark. While the world around this couple, a dystopian near-future American where billionaires control everything, could not be bleaker, the author’s retelling of the myth of Orpheus (who went to the underworld to rescue his wife) contains the authentic hope of a born optimist.

The Familiar: A Novel By Leigh Bardugo Flatiron Books: 400 pages, $30 (April 9)

Bardugo departs from novels of dark academia in a standalone to make the hairs on your neck stand up, set in 16th century Spain. A hidden Sephardic Jew and scullery maid named Luzia Cotado matches wits with fellow servant Guillén Santángel. Luzia discovers a secret of Guillén’s, but she’s already fallen in love with him. And because he knows hers, too, they might both avoid the Spanish Inquisition. It’s a gorgeous tale of enchantments both supernatural and earthly.

The Sleepwalkers: A Novel By Scarlett Thomas Simon & Schuster: 304 pages, $28 (April 9)

A couple honeymoons at a Greek resort. What could go wrong? In Thomas’ hands, plenty – especially as the author has never written a comfortable story; her books, from “PopCo ” to “Oligarchy,” crackle with unreliable characters, as well as big philosophical ideas. In this case, the new marriage’s breakdown is chronicled through letters between the spouses, and sometimes bits of ephemera, that ultimately untangle a dark mystery relating to the title.

The Garden: A Novel By Clare Beams Doubleday: 304 pages, $28 (April 10)

Few novels of literary fiction are written as well as “The Garden,” let alone given its sadly relevant retro setting, a 1940s country-estate obstetrical program. Irene Willard walks through its gates having endured five miscarriages; pregnant again, she and her war-veteran husband George desperately hope for a live birth. But as Irene discovers more about the woman who controls all here, Dr. Bishop, she fears carrying to term as much as she once feared pregnancy loss.

Reboot: A Novel By Justin Taylor Pantheon: 304 pages, $28 (April 23)

David Crader, former teen TV heartthrob, just wants to reboot his career when his old show “Rev Beach” has a moment. His life has devolved through substance abuse, divorce and underemployment. But when he and colleagues launch a remake, devolution continues: The protagonist’s struggles are mirrored by climate-change issues, from flooding to wildfires. Despite that darkness, Taylor’s gift for satire might make this a must-read for 2024 beach bags.

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World By Ada Limón (Editor) Milkweed Editions: 176 pages, $25 (April 2)

A wondrous artist herself, Limón is currently poet laureate of the United States, and this anthology is part of her signature project, “You Are Here,” which will also feature poetry as public art in seven national parks. Released in conjunction with the Library of Congress, the collection features 50 previously unpublished poems by luminaries including Jericho Brown, Joy Harjo, Carl Phillips and Diane Seuss, each focusing on a piece of regional landscape.

Like Love: Essays and Conversations By Maggie Nelson Graywolf Press: 336 pages, $32 (April 2)

While all of the pieces in Nelson’s new book have previously been published elsewhere, they’re made fresh here both through being collected and through their chronological placement. Readers can practically watch Nelson’s incisive mind growing and changing as she speaks with colleagues such as Hilton Als and Judith Butler, or as she writes about queerness, motherhood, violence, the lyrics of Prince and the devastating loss of a friend.

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder By Salman Rushdie Random House: 204 pages, $28 (April 16)

On Aug. 12, 2022, the author Salman Rushdie was speaking at upstate New York’s Chautauqua festival when a man rushed the stage and attempted to murder him. Rushdie, a target of Iranian religious leaders since 1989, was permanently injured. In this book, he shares his experience for the first time, having said that this was essential for him to write. In this way, he answers violence with art, once again reminding us all that freedom of expression must be protected.

Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America By Helen Tworkov St. Martin’s Essentials: 336 pages, $29 (April 16)

Dworkov, founder of the magazine Tricycle, chronicles her move from a 1960s young-adult interest in Buddhism to travels through Asia and deep study in the United States of the different strands that follow the Buddha’s teachings. Tworkov mentions luminaries such as the artist Richard Serra, the composer Charles Mingus and the Dalai Lama, but she’s not name dropping. Instead, she’s strewing fragrant petals from her singular path to mindfulness that may help us find ours.

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War By Erik Larson Crown: 592 pages, $35 (April 30)

Even diehard Civil War aficionados will learn from Larson’s look at the six months between Lincoln’s 1860 election and the surrender of Union troops under Maj. Robert Anderson at Charleston’s Ft. Sumter. Larson details Anderson’s secret Christmas redeployment and explores this individual’s contradictions as a former slave owner who loyally follows Lincoln’s orders. The author also shares first-person perspective from the famous diaries of the upper-class Southerner Mary Chesnut. All together, the book provides a riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult.

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Opinion Christine Blasey Ford is no hero, if justice is the measure

An earlier version of this column misspelled the name of Mollie Hemingway. This version has been corrected.

Christine Blasey Ford is promoting her new memoir to acclaim from certain quarters, including a glowing review by the New York Times. Meanwhile, the man she accused of being a witness to her alleged sexual assault by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh more than 40 years ago can’t get his own book reviewed or even mentioned by mainstream newspapers.

You know me. I can’t resist flipping over a cow patty to see what’s underneath.

Ford, you’ll recall, is the California psychologist with two front doors in her house who, in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018, accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her at a high-school-era party while another boy, Mark Judge, allegedly stood by. Judge, who kept his distance and silence during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings — in part, he has said , to avoid further harassment by Democratic interlocutors — released his own version of those events and the aftermath in “ The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi ” (2022).

As with Kavanaugh, Ford’s accusation against Judge was embraced by most of the news media despite an absence of evidence or corroborating testimony. No one who was supposed to have been at the party where Ford was allegedly assaulted remembered it, or her. Ford herself was unable to nail down the year the party took place (but settled on 1982 after several stabs) or where it was held, how she got there, how she got home or any other details, except that she herself had consumed just one beer, according to her testimony. Her claims against Kavanaugh ultimately were unsubstantiated.

Even so, the awards and accolades for Ford keep coming. During a recent appearance on “The View,” she was nearly sanctified for her “bravery.” Not one of the “View” chin-wags seemed to have done any research. They merely checked the box next to “female” and continued to hold in contempt the male who became a Supreme Court justice. Whoopi Goldberg summed it up: “To face those people the way they were looking and dealing with you, that is bravery under a whole different kind of fire.”

A fair-minded person would also wonder what it was like to be in Kavanaugh’s seat.

And what about Judge? “Roadkill” is the way constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley described Judge’s invisible role in this tale. Of course, Judge and Kavanaugh were and are distinct people whose adult lives could not be more different. Kavanaugh was the kind of boy who kept a detailed calendar of his busy activities and who had a stellar career as a federal judge.

Judge, who chronicled his heavy-drinking school days in his 1997 book, “ Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk ,” was a teenage alcoholic who had to claw his way to sobriety and suffered accordingly. He told Martha MacCallum during a recent Fox News interview that the effects of being essentially locked in a stockade for public ridicule and condemnation included “suicidal ideation” and “economic issues.”

Under interrogation by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh was forced to review his youthful beer consumption, which he admitted was gustatory. He wasn’t alone; Ford was a drinker, too, according to friends and outlined in the deeply researched book “ Justice on Trial ” by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino.

In my own research for a book that never came to fruition, I also learned that Ford was a party girl, which means she and I would have been friends. Her real “best friend” at the time, Leland Keyser, was known as her designated driver in those days, according to several of her friends cited in yet another book, “ The Education of Brett Kavanaugh ” by New York Times writers Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly.

A straight-A student and athlete who became a professional golfer, Keyser had her driver’s license at the time of the alleged assault.

Keyser, who felt pressured by Ford’s supporters to confirm Ford’s story, testified to the FBI that she had no recollection of any such party and didn’t know Kavanaugh.

When intimidation didn’t work, Ford and her friends implied that Keyser’s testimony couldn’t be trusted because she had “significant health challenges,” as Ford put it during her testimony. It didn’t take long for the meaning here to become public. Keyser had at one point become addicted to painkillers prescribed for golf-related back and neck injuries. She has suffered years of surgeries and pain that continues today, thanks to her commitment to recovery. No meds. She also has had to cope with the psychological effects of her persecution by the anti-Kavanaugh brigade. At least one person from Team Ford tried to persuade her to adjust her story. She refused.

Meanwhile, after five years of silence, Judge has emerged from his bunker with both barrels blazing. One can stand only so much smearing. He was, after all, accused in the public arena of variously urging Kavanaugh on or trying to stop him, all the while laughing, according to Ford. Like Kavanaugh, Judge was presumed guilty — a tragic by-product of the “believe the woman” orthodoxy that emerged during the #MeToo movement — and justly wants to have his say.

It takes guts to try to breach the #MeToo iron curtain, as Judge is attempting to do. It takes no courage at all to enrich yourself at other people’s expense, as Ford has done. Even if she believes her own story or suffered some traumatic event at some time, in the absence of evidence or corroboration, a measure of doubt is called for. This doesn’t necessarily mean she lied, as Hemingway and Severino have noted.

Both Judge and Keyser, it seems, deserve the applause Ford is receiving for perpetuating a questionable history that has damaged so many people, not to mention the judicial system she says she has sought to protect. We know the truth is otherwise, thanks to a video capture of Ford’s lawyer, Debra Katz, saying that her client wanted to block Kavanaugh because of fears he would vote to reverse Roe v. Wade . Ford’s fears might have been justified, but her tactics — which have netted her $1 million in donations plus overnights at Oprah’s — were not.

Nothing good grows under a cow patty, but Ford sure did step in one.

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Guest Essay

How to Breathe With the Trees

By Margaret Renkl

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

Even on a computer screen, Ada Limón, who is serving her second term as poet laureate of the United States, projects such warmth and reassurance that you could almost swear she was sitting beside you, holding your hand. This kind of connection between strangers, human heart to human heart, is so rare as to be startling, especially these days.

April is National Poetry Month, and it strikes me that no one is better positioned than Ms. Limón to convince Americans to leave off their quarrels and worries, at least for a time, and surrender to the language of poetry. That’s as much because of her public presence as because of her public role as the country’s poet in chief. When Ada Limón tells you that poetry will make you feel better, you believe her.

In her nearly weekly travels as poet laureate, Ms. Limón has had a lot of practice delivering this message. “Every time I’m around a group of people, the word that keeps coming up is ‘overwhelmed,’” she said. “It’s so meaningful to lean on poetry right now because it does make you slow down. It does make you breathe.”

A poem is built of rests. Each line break, each stanza break and each caesura represents a pause, and in that pause there is room to take a breath. To ponder. To sit, for once in our lives, with mystery. If we can’t find a way to slow down on our own, to take a breath, poems can teach us how.

But Ms. Limón isn’t merely an ambassador for how poetry can heal us . She also makes a subtle but powerful case for how poetry can heal the earth itself. At this time of crisis, when worry governs our days, she wants us to look up from our screens and consider our own connection to the earth. To remember how to breathe by spending some time with the trees that breathe with us.

In the United States, about half of poets laureate spend their terms developing a signature project that fosters a greater appreciation of poetry. Ms. Limón has two: “ You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World ,” an anthology of nature poetry that will be released on Tuesday; and “ You Are Here: Poetry in the Parks ,” a series of poetry-centered picnic-table-style installations in seven national parks. Each will be inscribed with the words of a poet associated with that landscape and also with a writing prompt designed to nudge readers to try their own hands at making a poem. These initiatives will be formally introduced on Thursday at the Library of Congress in conjunction with the library’s inaugural Mary Oliver Memorial Event.

Whether sweeping and magnificent or nearly microscopic — a majestic national park vista, say, or an ant colony’s communal effort to save its own inadvertently uncovered eggs — the natural world has always been a catalyst for lyricism. “There’s a reason why people go to these incredible natural landscapes and think, ‘I have no words,’” Ms. Limón said. “And yet the poets, we love to see if we can figure out some words: ‘Let’s see if we can name that kind of wonder, that kind of awe.’”

The connection between the beauty of the world and the beauty of the language is more crucial now than it has ever been. In its intimacy, its revelation not just of nature but also of the perceiving self, nature poems offer one of the few paths we have to consider the risks to the natural world in a way that is free of partisan rancor.

Those risks are foremost in Ms. Limón’s mind. In considering what her signature project as poet laureate would be, the thought that came to her was both small and impossibly huge: “I just want us all to write poems and save the planet,” she writes in the introduction to “You Are Here.”

“We all have nature poems within us — every single one of us,” Ms. Limón said when I asked her about this statement. “I wanted to have a book that not only allowed us to think of many different ways that nature poems can exist and move in the world, but also give people permission to write their own nature poems and think about it in a different way.”

“You Are Here” is an anthology of nature poems by 50 of the most accomplished poets working today, including the PEN/Voelcker Award winner Rigoberto González, the former U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, the Pulitzer Prize winner Diane Seuss and the Kingsley Tufts Award winner Patricia Smith, among many others who have won national awards for their work. “I just asked for these original poems, like, ‘Will you make this poem that speaks back to the natural world, whatever that means to you?’” Ms. Limón said.

The poems she got in response represent a great diversity of poetic voices and forms, and also a diversity of natural landscapes. If your idea of nature poetry is, as Ms. Limón said only half-jokingly, “a young gentleman walking to a mountain and having an epiphany,” this anthology will put that notion to rest.

Whoever you are, you will find yourself and your own world in the expansiveness of this collection. Even in the specificity of each poet’s own inimitable experience, you will find your own voice and your own perceiving self, for the natural world includes us and enfolds us all. Nature can be found on a mountain, yes, but it can also be found on a city stoop. Or in a drainage ditch. Or in the sky above a prison yard. Wherever we are, that is where the natural world is, too. It is there. We just have to notice it.

Writing a poem might seem like the least practical way imaginable to address melting glaciers, bleaching coral, drought, pollution and the like, never mind the overarching catastrophes of climate change and mass extinction. What can language do to save us now? What can something so small as a poem possibly do to save us now?

The answer lies in poetry’s great intimacy, its invitation to breathe together. We read a poem, and we take a breath each time the poet takes a breath. We read a nature poem, and we take a breath with the trees. When the trees — and the birds and the clouds and the ants and even the bats and the rat snakes — become a part of us, too, maybe that’s when we will finally begin to care enough to save them.

Margaret Renkl , a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “ The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, ” “ Graceland, at Last ” and “ Late Migrations .”

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