Facts

Recycling Facts

1- Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
2- Every month Americans throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper (think: Empire State Building), but all of these jars are recyclable!
3- It takes 75,000 trees each week to produce the Sunday edition of the New York Times.
4- If Americans recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save 25 million trees a year.
5- The average American uses 580 pounds of paper each year. As a nation we consume 850 million trees annually.
6- The 17 trees saved by recycling one ton of paper can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air each year.
7- Recycling and reusing the material in "tin" cans reduces energy use by 74%, air pollution by 85%, solid waste by 95%, and water pollution by 76%.
8- Every year, Americans throw away enough office and writing paper to build a wall 12 feet high from New York to Los Angeles.
9- In one year, American steel recycling saves enough energy to heat and light 18 million homes. One pound of steel saves enough energy to light a 60 watt bulb for 24 hours.
10- More than 20 million Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. Believe it not, ALL that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it so most it goes in the trash!
11- Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures a year! Ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It's twice the size of Texas and is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. It's also 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons.
12- 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!
13- Recycling one ton (about 2,000 pounds) of paper saves 17 trees, two barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for six months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of pollution.
14- In 1991, the Great Wall of China became the second largest man-made structure in the world. The largest was Fresh Kills Landfill, serving New York City. It is now the highest point on the east coast.
15- It takes 95% less energy to make aluminum by recycling it than by producing it from its natural ore, bauxite. It costs less too.
16- For every glass bottle recycled, we save enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for 4 hours.