Reducing the Use of Resources

• Materials such as glass, metals and plastics are important to our standard of living
• Why must materials such as glass, metals and plastics be used wisely, and reused and recycled wherever possible?

  To save money , To make sure natural resources are not used up unnecessarily , To reduce the amount of waste produced , To reduce damage to the environment caused by extraction
• Metal, glass, building materials and plastics that are made from crude oil are produced from limited resources
• Our supplies of metal, glass, building material ,plastic and the fossil fuels used to obtain them are finite
• The mining and quarrying processes used to extract metal, glass, building materials and plastics can have negative environmental impacts
• Some objects such as plastic bags and glass bottles can be reused
• Waste glass can be crushed , melted and then reused
• Some waste plastic can be recycled to make fleece material
• Metals can be recycled by melting them down and then making them into new objects
• Recycling generally uses far less energy than initial extraction and production processes - As a result, less fossil fuels is burned and less greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere - It also preserves our reserves of raw materials for the future