It takes 17 full grown trees to make one tonne of paper. The awareness of this one fact can encourage people to take serious steps towards recycling of paper. Recycling is a process driven by the goodwill to save the environment from running out of its precious and valuable resources. It is the collection of used articles subjected to further processing that utilizes minimum energy in the re-manufacture of the same product with most of its properties retained.
Paper is one of the most exhaustively consumed product in our daily routine. It is an integral part of every home, business, educational institution, hospitals, courts, offices and various other establishments. It occupies the major portion of the wastes disposed off everyday making it the topmost material that is used and disposed. By recycling just one morning newspaper we can save cutting down of 41,000 trees and greatly reduce the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted due to process carried out during waste disposals also concisely known as carbon footprint (a measure of carbon dioxide released). While the manufacturing process of paper involves chopping up or burning the trees leading to humongous loss of energy and fuel, the recycling process uses 60% lesser energy for the same.
Papers that can be easily recycled are newspapers, shredded paper, phonebooks, cardboard, magazines, envelopes, calendars etc. and these can be refurbished to form new products like egg cartons, paper towels, tissue, toilet paper, newspaper, paper bags, notebooks, stamps and so on. The best part of paper recycling is that there is minimal usage of chemicals like bleaches which in turn is safer for the environment.
Some of the major benefits of recycling paper are reduction in the amount of landfill space occupied, considerable reduction in the number of trees being used up for its production, the resulting reduction in deforestation that would otherwise lead to increased erosion of soil, disruption of water cycle, loss of biodiversity, flooding and drought, climate changes, recycling of paper also reduces emission of sulfur dioxide, minimizes use of fossil fuels and finally saves immeasurable amount of energy.
The steps towards recycling of paper can be carried out on a personal basis,smaller or larger scale. As an initial step that an individual can contribute towards successful recycling of paper is to sort out paper from other materials in trash, and categorize them according to their type. You may then take your collection of used paper to a local recycling center or recycling bin. These huge chunks of used paper are then transported to a paper mill where the paper is stored in warehouses and used up as required. Paper is grouped according to their various grades of quality. These are then passed on to large conveyors into a pulping machine wherein the pulpier chops the paper in a mixture of water and some chemicals, into small pieces. The mixture is then heated and tiny cellulose strands are formed following its breakdown. The mixture is then screened and filtered to remove unwanted impurities, is cleaned, deinked- a process undertaken to eliminate inks off the printed parts of the paper, refined, bleached and stripped off color. This product is sent into final processing which gives out sheets of white paper ready to be used yet again.
Recycling is generally known as the process of obtaining new products from the renewal of used articles that efficiently reduces factors like the consumption of fresh raw materials, energy consumption, various types of environmental pollution and production of greenhouse gases. It is essential to conserve natural raw materials so that we are not drained off our valuable resources and preserve the ecological balance of nature.
Metals form an integral part of our day to day lives. The various products we use on a regular basis include goods like household appliances, cutlery, aluminum beverage cans, steel cans, various types of pins and needles, some disposable medical products and so on. It is believed that the metals like aluminuim and steel have high scrap metal recycling value, so the more we recycle them the more is the energy and money saved. Recycling metals is so efficient such that it uses 95% less energy consumed in the manufacturing of the same. Other metals like copper, brass, bronze, zinc, magnesium, tin and lead are also conveniently recycled.
The most significant advantage of recycling of metals is that no matter how many times you recycle them they retain their properties and are ready to be used all over again with the same efficiency, unlike some other articles like plastic. The most commonly used metals in domestic environments are aluminum and steel. Aluminium is an ore naturally occurring in nature as a mineral combined with oxygen. Manufacture of aluminum involves inducing huge amounts of electrical energy to separate the oxygen from the aluminuim. It is then melted and shaped into various products. Similarly, steel is created in an hot blast furnace involving a chemical reaction, during which iron ore, that is the raw material used in the process, is separated from its oxygen content. Both these metal production processes consumes enormous amounts of energy. On the contrary, their recycling process only uses about 4% of this total energy, which has many positive implications including reduction of energy consumption and emission of greenhouse gases.
For recycling metals, they are first sorted out into two major categories. One is ferrous metals, these are made up of steel and iron while the other is non-ferrous metals, such as aluminuim, copper, nickel, brass, titanium, lead, chromium, etc. Non ferrous metals are easily recycled as compared to the ferrous metals. Household metal scraps are sorted based on the above categories. Steel cans are melted down and impurities are separated and thus the recycled product obtained is widely used in the construction industry. The other by products are used to make more cans and other similar products. On the other hand, aluminum cans are compressed and melted down followed by removal of impurities and are then rolled into sheets that find numerous applications again. This process is far more faster and the recycled product are back into the market in no time.
So inorder to inculcate smart living in this rapidly depleting natural resource environment, it is important to recycle your metal goods that helps save a lot of energy and a lot of other resources like water, reduces emissions of carbon dioxide like gases thus decreasing air pollution, increases the landfill space and also reduces the need to mine more and more raw materials at a faster rate thus helping in their preservation.
Plastics is one of the most extensively used products of the modern generation. It is widely seen used as a packaging product of almost everything that you can think of, in the making of toys, household goods, making of all kind of cards like credit cards, sim cards, shopping cards, identity cards and so on. Although the use of plastic has many positive influences in our day to day lives they are also known to have a substantial number of health and environmental hazards. There are categories of plastic that can be recycled and that cannot. It is manufactured by the combination of petroleum or natural gas with oxygen or chlorine. This process requires the burning of huge amounts of oil. So more the petroleum we burn to make new plastic products, the more greenhouse gases we release into the air. Plastic takes up of about 10% of the total waste products disposed away into the landfills and only 5% of these are actually renewable.
To curb this alarming rate of growing environmental hazard it is important to create awareness about recycling of plastics with a few contributions to the society on our part. Recycling plastics can save a lot of energy in the form of reduction in oil and petroleum consumption and save a considerable amount of space in our landfills. Plastics require a more complicated processing for its recycling as compared to glass and metals. They are made up of higher molecular weight polymer chains for which application of heat itself is not sufficient. There are two major hindrances in efficient plastic recycling. One is that, when different plastics are melted together, due to their variable compositions, they tend to separate like oil and water and renewing them into a new plastic only results in the yield of structurally weak polymer blends with a lot of limitations in their application. The other is that, certain additives used in the manufacture of plastics like dyes, filters and so on are too difficult to be separated or removed and proves to be a costly affair.
The most easily degradable plastics are soda and water bottles, medicine containers, milk and oil containers and so on. The most toughest ones are plastics containing polyvinyl chloride like plastic pipes, shower curtains, medical tubing, grocery bags, plastic used in Tupperware and so on. Plastic articles are numbered according to its feasibility to be recycled with numbers ranging from 1,2 and so on known as the plastic identification code. Thus we as concerned citizens of a threat prone environment should make efforts to categorize the plastics accordingly from the collection of junk in our houses. Call the local recycling facilities in your area or search for the same on the internet. Remove miscellaneous attachments to your plastic products like a metal top for bottles or labels on the bottles that might not be of the same rank of viability to recycling with the plastics that you sort out. Crush plastic containers to save space in your recycling bins.
In some countries like Israel, recycling of films obtained from mixed municipal wastes is successfully practiced resulting into its re-manufacture into useful household articles like buckets. Many clothing industries have also come up with applications of recycled plastics into creating a blend with certain fabrics and other materials to produce polyester fabrics that are used to make durable and strong products like jackets, coats, shoes, bags, hats and other accessories.
Recycling can be described as the assembling, developing, promoting or buying of products which are prepared from waste products. Recycling process is majorly practiced in all parts of the world owing to the depletion of naturally occurring raw materials and increase in energy consumption, decreasing landfill space and ultimately its adverse effects caused on the environment.
Recycling comes into picture for those commodities that are used extensively by almost everyone in the world. It is important to reduce the wastage and increase the re-usage of such items to maintain a good balance in the environment. One such commodity that has found increasing usage in the past decade is the computer. Computers are largely in demand in all walks of life, be it for personal use or for other businesses. Although, since these gadgets get outdated pretty soon and require replacing every now and then, it poses a problem in increasing the disposal of such electronic waste, also known as e-waste, into our landfills. e-waste recycling is a method of retaining operable parts and components from unusable electronic devices and having systems dismantled in a way that allows for safe extraction of certain constituents from the original to be reused in other products.
Computers contain toxic and carcinogenic chemicals such as lead oxide, mercury, nickel, zinc, cadmium, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chromium and radioactive isotopes which are extremely perilous to human health and the environment. Some of these materials like tin, silicon, iron, aluminum and a variety of plastics can be reused in the construction of new systems thus curbing the costs of manufacture of fresh raw materials. They may also contain valuable components like lead, copper and gold that can be retained successfully. Although this comes with a drawback. The lead that is contained in the lead glass of the cathode ray tube and the lead contained in the circuit boards in the form of lead-solders have the tendency to leach into groundwater or create air pollution through incineration. Another drawback is when retaining the valuable metals via incinerations and acid treatments, they may release and synthesize further toxic by products.
So the best possible way to reduce accumulation of e-wastes is to donate used computers to schools and non-profit organizations or you can send it to a recycling facility that recycles metals, glass and plastic like articles. The parts of the computers that can be recycled are the glass monitor, keyboard, CD Rom drive, plastic case, cathode ray tube, cables, copper in power cord, metals from the circuit board, printer cartridges and batteries. You can also take a step ahead while ordering new computers by cross checking if the manufacturers offer recycling services. Most major brands and companies offer some form of recycling. Certain manufactures also offer a free replacement service while purchasing a new computer of a specific brand. They take back the old computers, refurbish them and re-sell them in the market. There are also online auction sites like eBay where one can resell their computers for a reasonable price.
The only thing to be taken under consideration for secure recycling is that the private data on the hard drive is destroyed because we do not want to encourage illegal activities like identity thefts that can cause major businesses to lose more than just money.
Common countries participating in online scams include Nigeria, Romania, Ukraine, Spain, UK, Italy, and Netherlands. It doesn't mean that scamming is limited to these countries. It could be anywhere in the world.
The most dangerous type of online scam is identity deception. Some merchants intentionally disguise their identity inorder to defraud the customers and avoid detection. The technology of the Internet makes it very simple for the users to disguise their identities. Some of the marketers claim to be their location in China. They will be using the location either to disguise their true location so that they can fool the customers and swindle their money or simply to promote their business. The fact is that they will have no connection with China at all.
There are some simple ways to identify these kinda scammers. These scammers usually use a VOIP number to disguise their location. The numbers with prefix +4470 or +4487 are not usually used by genuine companies and are not used in China at all. The simplest method of checking the location of the companies is through their phone numbers. Using the Website numberingplans.com one can search for the geographic location of any phone number. If the location differs from the one that has been claimed by the company, say no to them straight away, no doubt it is a scam.
The predominant way to identify a scam is to make an effort to check the information provided. “Please! Be smarter than the scammer”
Nowadays we can see a lot of advertisements like the above title. Haven't you seen it? Oh! I am really sorry; I forgot to tell that they will be in a different form. Ok have you ever come across any advertisement like, “Congratulations, you have won a cash prize of 500 U.S. dollars click here to claim the prize”. If yes, this advertisement is the disguised way of telling that “you are going to loose your money, click here to do that”.
Please understand that, “There is no such thing as something for nothing”. You are probably dealing with a scam if
- You receive uninvited gifts or goods from any source
- An offer from overseas
- A request to pay a fee for more benefits.
- Pay a fee and collect the prize.
- A huge offer on purchase which is hard to believe.
Another way to loose money is through the purchase scams. Assume that your have a car that has to be sold. And you have published it in the Internet. What happens, is you get an immediate response for your advertisement. The only mistake that happens is that the buyer sends a cheque that is more than the value that you have quoted for your car. What you will do is you will call up the buyer and inform him that he had sent some extra money. And the buyer advises you to send back the extra amount when shipping the car. He also arranges an associate to organize the shipping and collect the car. You will do all the steps that have been told by the buyer. Finally you understand that the cheque is dishonored one. But it will be too late when you figure it out. You have already sent the surplus funds to the buyer and also your car. Atlast the shipper disappears with your money.
Reports indicate that the import of steel to India has been increased by 70% in the period of April 2007 to march 2008. One of the key reasons for this mammoth increase in the import rate is that there is a fast growing demand for steel in India. The fast growing demand of steel is not the only reason of increased steel import in India. The other important factor being the lowered import duties and the relaxed rules and regulations of scrap metal import (Not the safety measures). Import duties of steel have been lowered from 15% to 5% during the period of 2007.
However there was a sudden increase in the import of steel in India in the year 2008. The reason being, the 5% import duty on iron, steel melting scrap, and aluminium scrap was totally scrapped in the government’s budget of 2008-2009 (i.e. Import duty is now 0% ). Moreover the general excise was reduced to 14% from 16%. We hope that this sudden cut down of import duties and general excise was to increase the availability of steel in the domestic market. Anyway this is absolutely good news to metal traders in India which keeps them smiling wide. The Indian steel imports has raisin in such a way that it exceeds the exports.
I don’t want anyone to get overwhelmed by the numbers above. To make it simple, let me tell you something about the impacts of this change in the import duty, general excise and the relaxed rules.
- The reduction of import duty of steel will allow Indian steel producers to access raw materials at lower prices.
- This act also boosts the consumer demand for the finished products in India.
- Also this reduction in import duty of scrap steel will enable India to produce steel at much lower cost than China.
- If automobile manufacturers pass this reduced excise duty in the form of lower prices, the demand of steel will increase and hence helping the companies like TATA to supply steel.
- Reduction in customs duty for on aluminium metal scrap will benefit the secondary aluminium manufacturers.
- The reduction in excise duty will enhance the housing and infrastructure activity.
- The excise duty reduction will bring down the prices of automobiles and also eventually increase their demand.
- The rule and regulations of scrap metal import are very much relaxed as they seemed impractical in India (virtually to promote the trade).
- The imports of scrap steel and aluminium will become easier and convenient than any other countries.
Hence this total cut of import duty of scrap metal in India will take India’s metal trade to the peak in the global scrap metal market. And also the new rules and regulations of scrap metal import, laid by the Indian government where withdrawn because of the impracticality of those rules. The old rules said that unshredded scraps were only permitted from suppliers who have been registered by the government. However this rule has been totally scrapped off. Don’t get confused with the facts and figures mentioned above. The thing is that “the gateway of India is wide open for metal trade, all are welcome to do the metal trade in India! So come let’s do the trade!”
“Exiting offer! Mercedes Benz C-class for just rupees fifty thousand. Hurry, limited offer! Select your transaction method!” Please don't search for the location where you can get it. We are not gonna mention it, as it is simply impossible, as everyone knows, and this is an example for scam advertisement.
A Western Union scam is any scam that uses Western Union method of payment. If anyone sees an advertisement as the one above, you will be anxious in getting a Benz and you will straight away agree to send the money through a transfer service. Anyway the money will be sent, but you will not receive the C-class Benz. Unfortunately the money has been already picked up. It means that you've been a victim of online auction fraud. If you are lucky enough you will atleast receive prototype model of a Benz C-class.
About western Union:
The Western Union money transfer service is the great way to sent money to the people you know and trust. And Western Union recommends not using western union money transfer service to pay for online auction purchases as they do not offer any types of purchase protections or escrow service. To make it simple, once the money is sent, there is no protection on it, and no way to get it back.
TIPS TO AVOID WESTERN UNION SCAM:
- Be cautious if the online seller will accept only one type of money transfer. Most legitimate sellers will accept more than one form of payment.
- Make sure that you check out any seller references or feedback before making a purchase. However, often this method won't work because the seller can himself create the feedback or reference and may be bogus.
- Western union money transfer is the 100% preferred payment method of scammers. Because the moment the scammer gets the MTCN number or the money transfer number he can get the money and disappear into cyberspace, leaving you with an empty box, damaged pride and a hole in your pocket. So even if sellers say that there paypal accounts are down, don't pay them through western union.
We take the issue of consumer fraud very seriously. We value the consumers who use our services and know they work hard for earning every single penny. When consumers loose money, we feel like we loose. So please report any abuse if found.
NIGERIAN SCAM- ADVANCE FEE FRAUD:
This Nigerian scam escalates rapidly once you show the interest in it. Let us make it clear with an example.
Assume that you have received a purchase order for your company's product. However, intentionally, the initial order won't be large; the scammers will usually start off with a sample order which will be paid with a bogus credit card or a draft. These fake importers will lure you, saying that they will be placing a big order soon. Aiming at the big order, you will send the sample to them. After some days, you will receive an email stating that your sample has been approved for sale and all you have to do is to send 500 U.S. dollars (sometimes even more) to get you registered to trade your products in their country. Falling into temptation you will send the cash for registration also. However, you won't receive any bulk order thereafter, and you won't be able to contact the importers also. Simply, your money is gone!
However, this Nigerian scam can be avoided easily. Credit cards and demand drafts from Nigeria, Togo, Cameroon, Benin, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Ghana can be avoided. Ship the goods only after receiving the money in your account, which you can withdraw. In addition, keep in mind that it takes up to three weeks to clear an International deposit. Even your bank should confirm it in writing.
Moreover, this Nigerian scam is often dangerous physically too. Wondering how? In some cases you will be asked to travel to Nigeria to complete a transaction. You will also be told that no visa is required to enter the country. “Entering Nigeria without a valid visa is a serious offense.” So how do the scammers get benefited in this? These cunning scammers bribe the airport officials and tell them to allow the marketer to pass the immigration and customs. Hence the victim's illegal entry into the country will be used by the scammers as leverage to coerce the victim into releasing funds. If the victims don't obey to what the scammers say, then the will be killed!
To protect yourself, say no any offer if you feel something fishy. Never provide any personal details if you are not sure about the genuineness of the importer. The main thing is to report the abuse if found so that thousands of people will be saved from it.
Success is not only measured by how much money we make, but also the impact we have. Don't fear that I am going to overwhelm you with some with numbers, graphs, and figures to explain you the success of recycling. Nowadays recycling is appreciated and practiced from schools to international organizations. They are digging... Oh sorry that's not digging; they are mining the garbage and are finding dollars out of it while caring the environment too. There are many recoverable metals in our nation's thrash which can be recycled and reused for 'n' number of times.
There are many schools that have earned hundreds or even thousands of dollars through simple recycling. This is a survey about the global recycling programs. Starting in 1960 recycling was about 6%. In 1990 it increased to 16%, later in 1995 it was 26% and finally now it's nearly 50%. I think, I lied that we won't use any figures or numbers in this passage. Anyway this won't happen again. The survey above shows the fast improvement in recycling. All the fast growth in recycling is because of its positive affect on the environment and high competition in the market.
Nowadays recycling is done with the help of two programs. One is a voluntary program in which the residents are encouraged to recycle the waste produced at home. However they are not forced to do so. The other one is mandatory program. As the name shows, some communities have passed laws mandating citizens to recycle at least the trash produced by them. Anyway the second program is not successful as the first one. The reason is simple. “Enforcing law is impractical”. Successful recycling programs are those that make people easy to recycle the thrash. The most successful move is to provide thrash containers in the city so that recyclers can collect them easily. This method is widely practiced nowadays.
Apparently recycling is in the path of success. Let's ask you, how many times have you been encouraged to recycle? “All the so-called "secrets of success" will not work unless you do”. So let's work together and do great things.