Recycling

Did You Know?...

• The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.
• On average, each one of us produces 4.4 pounds of solid waste each day. This adds up to almost a ton of trash per person, per year.
• About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material!
• If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
• If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.
• Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!
• Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
• Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!
• The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours or a compact fluorescent bulb for 20 hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.
• A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.
• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
• An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!
• A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest!