身边的经济学·社会常识英语30篇（7）

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为何回收并不总是环保

Sending plastic bottles overseas for recycling sounds helpful—until you learn most end up buried or burned.
Sorting centers reject items with food residue or mixed materials, so half of what we toss gets landfilled anyway.
Making new aluminum cans uses far less energy than producing them from raw ore—recycling metal truly pays off.
But recycling paper uses nearly as much water and energy as making it fresh, especially if ink removal is complex.
Some cities stopped accepting certain plastics after global markets collapsed, leaving towns to rethink waste plans.
The greenest choice isn’t always recycling—it’s refusing unnecessary packaging or reusing containers longer.
Economists call this ‘life-cycle cost’: counting energy, transport, and labor from factory to landfill.
Understanding trade-offs helps us support policies that reduce waste—not just shift it somewhere else.