One morning, I trudged into my aunt’s kitchen to make my breakfast. I had just gotten the last egg in the egg carton and finished the box of cereal. My aunt walked in right as I aimed to throw away those two boxes. To my surprise, she started scolding me in Korean about how precious these items were. I thought to myself, why were these dollar items valuable? I mean, what use could an empty cardboard and paperboard have? I later learned that these items were not literally "valuable", but they came with a cost; my aunt would have to pay a bigger price if she threw them into the trash.
Like my 12-year-old self, many people fail to realize the importance of recycling every necessary item. The media especially emphasizes the importance of recycling plastic. Of course, I’m not saying we need to stop recycling plastic! No – rather, I’m expressing the importance of considering other products as recyclable material. I learned a lot from my stay in Korea; everybody there contributes a great deal into recycling and keeping the environment clean. They may get fined if they're caught with too many trash bags or if they don’t recycle.
I sometimes forget that other ordinary material, such as newspapers, brown paper bags, cardboard, aluminum cans, glass bottles, zippers, to name a few, are recyclable and shouldn’t be placed in the regular trash pile. Next time, instead of absentmindedly throwing out of all of the trash, let’s take care to place certain materials in another pile. It’s really not that hard to sort out trash.
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