Recycling Facts
- Currently less than 35% of households and less than 10% of businesses in the United States Recycle
- If recycling in the United States can reach 75%, it will be the environmental benefit of removing 50 million cars
Plastic:
- Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour
- Recycling one ton of plastic bottles saves the equivalent energy usage of a two person household for one year
Cans:
- Recycling a single aluminum an saves enough energy to power a TV for three hours
- Every three months, Americans throw enough aluminum in landfills to build our nation’s entire commercial air fleet
- It requires 95% less energy and water to recycle a can than it does to create a can from virgin materials
Papers:
- An estimated 47% of school garbage is recyclable paper
- Americans throw away enough office paper each year to build a 12 foot high wall from Seattle to New York
- Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the United States
- Making paper from waste paper produces 73% less air pollutants and uses 61% less process water than when paper is made from virgin fiber
- Recycling a stack of newspaper just 3 feet high saves one tree
Glass:
- Glass can be recycled and re-manufactured an infinite amount of times and never wear out
- Recycling just one glass jar saves enough electricity to light an 11 watt CFL bulb for 20 hours
- More than 28 billion glass bottles and jars end up in landfills every year- that is equivalent to filling up two Empire State Buildings every three weeks
Cardboard:
- Recycling cardboard only takes 75% of the energy need to make new cardboard
- Recycling 1 ton of cardboard saves 46 gallons of oil
- Over 90% of all products shipped in the United States are shipped in corrugated boxes, which totals more than 400 billion square feet of cardboard