While you likely already know that recycling is important, you may not know its specific benefits. Here are five of the most important reasons why you should toss that plastic bottle in the recycling bin instead of the trash.

1. Recycling creates a closed-loop lifespan of a product. If you choose not to recycle, you prevent the material used in that product—whether it’s plastic, glass or paper—from ever being used again. By recycling, you can create a closed-loop system in which that product is returned to the manufacturer and used to create new items.
2. It prevents pollution. In addition to sustaining natural resources, recycling prevents the environmental damage caused by mining for those resources. It also greatly decreases the amount of waste in landfills.
3. It is more cost-effective. This is a lesser-known fact about recycling, but selling the materials in your recycling bin offsets the cost of processing them. Comparatively, simply throwing away your trash doesn’t bring in any money from sales, but it still costs money in landfill costs.
4. It saves energy. By recycling America’s 230 million tons of solid waste instead of taking it to a landfill, our country saves an average of 11.9 billion gallons of gasoline each year.
5. It creates jobs. That’s right: recycling is a major industry in the United States—one that amounts to $236 billion each year, in fact. It also employs more than 1.1 million people nationwide.

Why Recycle? [RecycleNow.com]
Top 10 Reasons to Recycle [Stark State College]
Eco-Cycle’s Ten Reasons to Recycle [Eco-Cycle]

CC-BY-2.0/Flickr/natalie419