Editor’s note: Today’s letters to the editor are from Southwest Junior High students learning about persuasive writing.

To the editor:

I may only be a teen, but I recycle, which gives you no excuse not to recycle. Why should you recycle? About 10 percent of the familiar plastic bottle is made from recycled plastic. The same goes with paper, when you recycle paper, drawn on or not, it gets turned back into pulp, or wet paper, then it is pressed and steamed, then dried, packaged and then you buy it and use it again.

Even though gas prices are high, there are multiple places where you can recycle; four of which take paper and cardboard. Wal-Mart is at a convenient location and it recycles things like glass (clear, amber, green, blue, and brown colored), paper (copy, and colored), plastic bottles (milk jugs, soda bottles), cardboard (cereal boxes too), newspapers, tin (soup cans, green bean cans, etc.), aluminum (soda cans), plastic bags, and much more. If you don’t recycle then all of those things are going to the landfill. Every landfill has a limit and the more we don’t recycle the more the landfills fill up. About 38 billion plastic bottles are thrown away each year.

Gracie Rinke, Southwest Junior High