Energy Consumption and Recycling

Developed countries use up about 80 % of the world’s energy. Today, the United States has about 5% of the world’s population but consumes one fourth of the world’s energy.

A person in a developing country uses only about a fifteenth as much energy as someone in the industrialized world. 

Country	% of Energy Consumed	% of Energy Produced
United States	25	5
China	9	21
Russia	7	3
Japan	6	2
Germany	4	1
India	3	17
France	3	1
United Kingdom	3	1

Recycling

Recycling means using something over and over again. Typical items that can be recycled are newspapers, cardboard, aluminium, batteries, glass bottles.

On average, every person in the US produces about 1.8 kg of waste every day.Dumping this waste in landfills is expensive and pollutes land, air and water. Recycling is one way of reducing the amount of waste we throw away every day.

Advantages of recycling:

• Recycling reduces the amount of waste that is dumped in landfills.

• It almost always takes less energy to make a product from recycled material than it does to make it from new material.

• By using materials more than once we can save natural resources. Recycling paper saves trees and water.

• Recycling creates more jobs.

• Recycling aluminium cans saves 95 % of the energy we need to produce aluminium from bauxite. 

Process of recycling

• Collect recyclable materials at home and put them into separate boxes or waste containers.

• Waste disposal trucks take them away to recycling factories. There they are cleaned and sorted out.

• Industries buy recycled material to make new products. 

Recycling in Poland

Words

• advantage = the good sides of something
• amount =how much of something
• average =usual, normal
• bauxite = a soft raw material from which we make aluminium
• cardboard = thick brown paper that is used for making boxes
• consume = use
• consumption =use
• container = a box or another object that you use to keep something in
• developed countries = rich countries of Europe, North America etc..
• developing countries = the poor countries of the Third World
• disposal = to get rid of something you don’t want
• dump = get rid of waste by bringing it somewhere and putting it under the ground
• landfill = a place where waste is buried under the ground or on the ground
• natural resources = things that exist in nature and can be used by people , like oil, trees, water etc..
• pollute = to make dirty
• reduce = to make something smaller or less
• separate =individual
• sort out = to separate one thing from another
• waste = materials that you don’t need any more or are left over