This winter, I went to Italy to visit my family and friends. During my stay, I wanted to use my time thinking about some of the major issues today and discovering if I have any power in improving the situation. Especially as a young person, a newer generation, I feel the urge to do something, to take a step towards development. Because if our generation doesn’t do anything to help improve the situation for the future, no one will.

The one topic that stood out to me, and the one I believe is the key to solving other issues is recycling.

Northern Italy has a requirement for differentiated bins and takes the concept of recycling very seriously. All around the city of Turin, every building complex has their own bins for various materials. The most commonly used are plastic, paper, glass, and organic.

Since the bins are only designed to receive only one material, people are obligated separate their waste.

Recycling preserves significant natural resources, conserves energy, reduces waste, etc. It is an essential now, more than ever, when people are consuming large amounts of resources carelessly. Recycling gives materials a “second life” where they can be reused as something new.

In Italy measures of recycling vary greatly from one region to another. “Waste disposal and recycling systems can be completely different, with some areas providing communal recycling bins, while others choose to hand out four or more small bins per household” (The Local).

“The ZERO WASTE project is like a three-legged stool. Unless each of the legs is solid, it will not stand up. The three legs are: The Town Council, the company responsible for waste collection, and citizens” (Sistema Ambiente).

Martials are grouped and separated. Some of the groups are:

• multi-material (glass and plastic containers),
• non-recyclable (all waste that can’t be collected separately),
• wet and organic (kitchen and garden waste), and
• paper and cardboard

After the waste has been grouped, the garbage should be taken out at certain times before the collection. There is a schedule explaining what group is collected what day. For example, on Monday’s, multi-material is collected.

I believe that recycling is one of the first steps that people must take in order to diminish waste. Plus, the process of re-using materials is much simpler than creating new ones. For example, re-using glass bottles could be done by throughout fully washing the bottles instead of having to make new bottles.

Recycling solves two major issues, pollution and overuse of natural resources.

With recycling, less waste will be produced and therefore less will end up in the environment. Also, there won’t be a need to extract and collect natural resources as frequently as before, as the same materials will be circulating in a cycle.

During the break I spent a lot of time thinking about the importance of recycling and what I could do about it. How I could help ameliorate the situation or encourage others to do so.

Every day I would pay attention to separating my waste by materials and grouping them into various bins. I would even separate the cap of a milk carton, so that both parts of the packaging could be recycled. All the organic waste was also collected. Small leftovers from the plate were also thrown in that bin, instead of just washing it off into the sink.

I also talked to my family about the importance of recycling and how this little gesture greatly improves the waste situation today.

Surely there are things that cannot be recycled, but if we wanted to, we could recycle most of our waste and reuse it for either the same thing or a completely new purpose and it would save a lot of money, energy, and resources.