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Recycling is the process of turning used products into raw materials that can be used to make new products to reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce air pollution and water pollution and reduce energy usage.
Recycling a product takes less energy than making a new one, for example producing steel from recycled material saves 75% of the energy that would be used if steel were made of virgin material, recycling 1 aluminium drink can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours.

Its main aim is to reduce pollution and conserve natural resources. People have always reused things, but nowadays recycling is a part of the modern environmental movement.

You can recycle anything from old paper, to plastic, to metal, to electronics, to glass, to textiles, however the composting or other reuse of biodegradable waste is not typically considered recycling.
Materials to be recycled are brought to a collection center, then sorted, cleaned, and turned into new materials.

Recycling of a material would produce a fresh supply of the same material, for example, used foamed polystyrene to more polystyrene, or used paper to more paper.

A recycled product is rarely exactly the same as the original material from which it was recycled, for example recycled paper contains ink residue and has shorter fibers than virgin paper and it may be less desirable for some purposes, such as paper used in a copy machine.
Paper recycled a few times is no longer usable.

Cheaper or weaker recycled good than the original product is known as down-cycling, while goods made into something more valuable than the original product can be up-cycled.
Recycling of many materials or products involves their reuse in
producing different materials because producing the same product is often too expensive or difficult.

In cooperation with Toshiba the company Terra Power, funded by Bill Gates, has been exploring the climate-friendly power generation using mini-nuclear power plants.

With the development of these mini-reactors, known as Traveling Wave Reactors, Terra Power pursues the goal of solving the world´s energy problems. According to Terra Power a great advantage of shaft reactors is that they get along with only one fuel load for several decades and apart from that, they only require little maintenance. This in turn will mean that there is no necessity to discuss the question of how to store old fuel rods.

In practical terms, the principle of the shaft reactor is the following: It requires only a small amount of enriched uranium and can otherwise be used with depleted or natural uranium.

By a slow migration of the fission zone through the fuel core, the depleted uranium is transformed into plutonium -239 during the operation and inside immediately used for the generation of energy. With the help of conventional steam turbines, the resulting heat is converted into electricity.

Plutonium is also produced in conventional nuclear power plants, but there it must be pulled out from the fuel rods in an extremely complex chemical process. Moreover, this process enables the use of plutonium for nuclear weapons, which in a shaft reactor is simply unthinkable.

If the calculation of Terra Power is correct, then the global supply of depleted uranium, in case of use in the mini-reactors, could provide enough electricity to the human race for up to ten thousand years, even if the per capita consumption was higher than average - like it is in the United States.

There's been a lot of talk of a futuristic and historically monumental planned city being built in the United Arab Emirates. I'm referring, of course, to the "zero carbon", "zero waste", "car free" Masdar City. Initiated in 2006, the project is projected to cost US$22 billion and take some eight years to build, with the first phase scheduled to be complete and habitable in 2009. Designed by the British architectural firm Foster + Partners, the city will rely entirely on solar energy and other renewable energy sources, with a sustainable, zero-carbon, zero-waste ecology. The city is being constructed 17 kilometres (11 mi) east-south-east of the city of Abu Dhabi, beside Abu Dhabi International Airport. The city will cover 6 square kilometres (2.3 sq mi) on a site 6.4 km² (2.5 sq mi) in size and will be home to 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses, primarily commercial and manufacturing facilities specialising in environmentally-friendly products.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean located between 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N. It is twice the size of Texas and contains approximately 3.5 million tons of trash. There is high concentrations of suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. The patch consists of very small pieces and is not visible from satellite photography, and most of its contents are suspended beneath the surface of the ocean.

Biodegradable means being able to be broken down into more basic components by fungi, bacteria or other simple organisms. Most chemicals are biodegradable but it takes different amount of time to break down, for example a piece of bread will break down rather quickly, and a piece of plastic will take decades and beyond.

A majority of products are made mostly of Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen; and the ideal final products would be Carbon Dioxide(CO2) and Water (H2O).

Piece of bread after breaking down from complex sugars to simpler sugars, will degrade to CO2 and H2O.

Algae are a large group of simple, autotrophic organisms, that do not develop multicellular sex organs. They can be unicellular, or multicellular organisms and can occur on the surfaces of moist soil or rocks, or in salt or fresh waters.

Algae are made up of eukaryotic cells with nuclei and organelles and have the bodies with chlorophyll that carry out photosynthesis.

The multicellular algae lack the true leaves, stems, or roots of the more complex, higher plants.

Photodegradable objects are substances that can be broken down into their simpler forms by the action of ultraviolet rays present in the sunlight.

It also means capable of being chemically broken down by light or capable of being decomposed by prolonged exposure to light, for example photodegradable plastic becomes brittle and breaks into smaller pieces when exposed to sunlight. It helps reduce litter and environmental damage.