recycling+facts

Recycling 1 ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space

About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is only 28%.

A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers that can all be recycled!

More than 20 million Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. Believe it or not, ALL that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it so most it goes in the trash!

Each year American throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam cups. Even 500 years from now, the foam coffee cup you used this morning will be sitting in a landfill.An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!

The Container Recycling Institute (CRI) estimates that the 36 billion aluminum cans landfilled last year had a scrap value of more than $600 million. Over the past twenty years we've worth over $12 billion on today's market. Some day we may be mining our landfills for the resources we've buried.

Recycled newspaper uses 40% less energy. Recycled glass uses 40% less energy. Recycled steel uses 60% less energy. Recycled plastic uses 70% less energy. Recycled aluminum uses 95% less energy

Every ton of newspaper or mixed paper recycled saves the equivalent of 12 trees. Every ton of office paper recycled saves the equivalent of 24 trees. Every ton of steel recycled conserves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal, and 120 pounds of limestone.