The production of human waste increases year by year. This vast amount of trash has formed islands hundreds of thousands of miles long in the oceans. There is so much litter that ends up in the oceans and on land that it has entered the food chain, greatly damaging biodiversity.

One way to reduce the amount of human waste is recycling in recycling centers; by lengthening the useful life of materials and preventing them from ending up in landfills, but also avoiding the production of new materials and thereby avoiding the over-exploitation of raw materials and the pollution that comes with the extraction of materials and their production.

In the United States, there are 633 material recycling centers. In these local recycling centers, the waste we generate is stored, and that has the capacity to be recycled so that other people or companies can take advantage of it. Waste that is not recycled takes many years to decompose, which pollutes and harms the health of humans and the earth.

In this sense, recycling centers are very important in the fight against environmental pollution, since they can clean, classify and pack a total of 100,000 tons of waste per day. However, the recycling centers cannot do all the work, the waste must have a correct treatment from the consumer, who must separate and clean the waste so that it can be classified correctly in the center and later sent to factories for transformation or processors.

Most of the local recycling centers work on a standard schedule according to their location and have a page on the internet, where you can check, what days they do not operate, what hours they serve, their address, and everything you need to know about your local recycling center.

Plastic bags are one of the most difficult types of plastic waste to recycle, mainly because they are single-use bags and in most curbside recycling programs they are not accepted. This is a huge issue for the environment as 100 billion plastic bags are used every year in the US alone.

The best way to recycle plastic bags is to take them to local grocery stores, or big box stores like Target or Walmart, which have specific bins for this type of plastic, or you can search for plastic bag recycling locations near you at: www.plasticfilmrecycling.org

It is essential to wash and dry all plastic waste, including single-use bags, before depositing them in the recycling, because if the bags contain food scraps, or some other source of bacteria, they contaminate the entire batch in which they are deposited, and cannot be recycled.

Paper is one of the easiest materials to recycle, however, for this to happen, it must be treated correctly from the beginning of the recycling chain, that is, from the consumer. The most important thing when it comes to recycling paper is that it does not contain polluting agents, since any type of food, oil, or some other residue makes it unrecyclable and can contaminate the entire batch.

Paper that is not recycled ends up in landfills and although it degrades rapidly compared to other materials since it is not reused, it increases the exploitation of forests and trees in the manufacture of the new paper.

As for cardboard boxes or cardboard in general, which is made up of several layers of paper, it is best to give it a second use whenever possible. On the other hand, failing that, keep them clean and break them so that they can be properly treated in the local recycling centers.