Recycling is beneficial because it conserves valuable natural resources, saves landfill space, reduces energy consumption, creates jobs, reduces disposal costs and reduces water pollution, air pollution and green house gas emissions:

• Natural Resources - conserving renewable resources through recycling helps preserve undisturbed land and natural diversity by reducing the amount of land needed for agriculture and timber production. The use of recycled materials reduces our consumption of finite sources like oil, natural gas or earth ores - all of which are finite.

• Landfill Space - everything that goes into a landfill stays there, taking up space. As waste breaks down, which can take hundreds of years, it releases methane gas, a large greenhouse gas emitter, and can emit toxic pollutants into our water table.

• Energy Consumption - significantly less energy is required to make products with recycled materials than virgin materials. For instance, it takes almost 20X the amount of energy to make aluminum cans from raw ore than it does from recycled cans. Recycled plastic products use up to 8X less energy. Reduced energy consumption means less greenhouse gas emissions and less dependency on foreign oil.

• Job Creation - recycling creates 8X to 10X more jobs than landfills and incinerators. Recycled products manufacturers add to this statistic as they often employ workers at higher rates than that of virgin material manufacturers. Check out the U.S. Recycling Economic Information Project for a comprehensive study about the economic impacts of recycling performed by the EPA.

• Disposal Costs - by keeping recyclable items out of our landfills, we reduce the need to build or expanded existing landfills, a very costly undertaking. This reduces the waste providers expenses and therefore the cost of garbage disposal is reduced.
  

• Pollution - we get most of our energy by burning fossil fuels. Using less energy from these polluting sources means less air pollution and water pollution. Also, the manufacturing of  new products from recycled materials consumes much less water. The use of recycled material also reduces the need for mining of raw materials. Mining causes soil erosion and chemical runoff when these materials are processed.