The Recycle materials game allows visitors to test their own
waste-sorting skills.
In Finland, households produce between three and five bags of mixed household waste a week that ends up in a landfill site. Most of this waste, as much as 98%, could be turned into industrial raw material or energy, or be composted.
Recycling means that a product or the materials it contains
are used again. Sorting means recognising different kinds of
materials and separating them from each other. The first step to
recycling at home is to sort the different materials separately. If
recyclable materials are actually recycled, this will help a lot in
preventing climate change. The substances that cause climate change
to accelerate include methane and carbon dioxide. Methane is a gas
that is generated in landfill sites as cardboard, paper and food
waste are mixed up and begin to rot in an oxygen-free environment.
This means that the occurrence of methane can easily be prevented
by recycling biowaste, cardboard and paper in the correct way.
Recycling also saves energy, which helps reduce carbon
dioxide emissions. When recycled aluminium is melted for re-use,
this only uses 5 per cent of the energy that would be needed in
order to manufacture new metal. Most power plants use fossil fuels
such as oil or coal for energy production. When these non-renewable
natural resources burn, they release a great deal of carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere.
Source: Statistics Finland publications from 2006, YTV
publications from 2004.
Updated 28.8.2007/KT
