by Allen Hershkowitz

About the author: Allen Hershkowitz is a leading expert on recycling and a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental conservation group. He is also the founder of the Bronx Community Paper Company, a paper recycling plant in the South Bronx, New York.

Using recycled materials helps avoid the air and water pollution typically caused by manufacturing plants that rely solely on unprocessed, virgin raw materials. Because using recycled materials reduces the need to extract, process, refine, and transport the timber, crude petroleum, ores, and so on that are necessary for virgin-based paper, plastics, glass, and metals, recycling lessens the toxic air emissions, effluents, and solid wastes that these manufacturing processes create. It is virtually beyond dispute that manufacturing products from recyclables instead of from virgin raw materials—making...