Recycling Facts

If you throw one aluminum can out, the energy wasted by not recycling is equivalent to filling the same can 1/2 full of gasoline and pouring it out.
Enough aluminum is thrown away each year to rebuild the entire U.S. Commercial air fleet every three months.
A plastic or styrofoam cup used for a few minutes takes approximately 400 years to decompose.
It takes 17 trees to make one ton of paper. Paper products consume 35% of the world's commercial wood harvest. This figure is expected to increase to 50% by the year 2000.
It requires 64% less energy (kWh) to produce paper from waste paper than virgin wood pulp.
74% less air pollution is produced from the manufacturing of recycled paper compared to paper from virgin wood pulp.
Recycled paper uses 58% less water compared to virgin paper production.
About 27% of America's paper waste is being recycled. It's estimated that at the current rate of recycling over 200 million trees are saved each year.
Approximately 41 billion glass containers are produced in the United States each year.
A paper bag can return to soil in just seven days.
Over 40% of all U.S. municipal solid waste consists of paper and paperboard products.
The U.S. annually uses over 75 million tons of paper and paperboard - about 600 pounds per person - and we currently recycle about 20 million tons.
Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail each year.
About 44% of junk mail is never opened.
In one year Americans throw away 28 billion recyclable glass bottles and jars.
Beverage cans are the biggest single use of aluminum.
Recycling uses 90% less energy than making new aluminum.
It takes 30-60% less energy to make "new" paper from "old" paper, and 95% less air pollution.
One (1) gallon of spilled gasoline can contaminate approximately 750,000 gallons of water.
The average U.S. office worker generates 1 1/3 pounds of office waste paper every daily.
Lead-acid batteries are the most recycled products in the United States. The break down is as follows: 98% Lead Batteries, 65% Aluminum Cans, 37% Glass Bottles, and 59% Newspapers.
One acre of Christmas trees produces the daily oxygen requirements for 18 people.
The United States has approximately 1 million acres of Christmas trees. This means that Christmas trees provide oxygen for 18 million people every day.
News papers typically can be recycled five to seven times. Each time they are recycled, their fibers become shortened. Eventually, they become too short to make good paper.
Americans buy about 65 million newspapers every day.
Nearly six of every 10 U.S. newspapers are recycled.
It takes 17 trees, on average, to produce one ton of paper.
Producing paper from recycled paper reduces air and water pollution by 50%.
Recycling one ton of paper saves 7,000 gallons of water and 4,100 kilowatt hours of electricity.
Steel is the most recycled material in North America. In 1996, the overall steel recycling rate was about 65%.
About 3 billion aerosol containers are manufactured and sold in the U.S. annually. If all of those cans were recycled that would be enough steel to manufacture 160,000 cars.