Know the Facts. Recycling Facts You Should Know!
Paper Recycling Facts.
The production of a ton of paper requires 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water and more energy per ton than glass or steel...
Every year Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper or 580 pounds per person...
To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees.
The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person.
The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.
Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water.
75% of each tree that is cut down for paper is not used in a paper product
Paper made from recycled paper uses 70% less energy
Each year, the United States used 85.5 million tons of paper, of which we recycle 22% or 19 million tons. Of the remaining paper, we could recycle up to 70% or 46 million tons.
46 million recycled tons of paper save 782 million trees.
Every day, Americans buy about 62 million newspapers and throw out around 44 million of them. If we recycled just half our newsprint every year, we would need 3,200 fewer garage trucks to collect our trash.
An average American uses 465 trees to create a lifetime of paper.
Americans throw away the equivalent of more than 30 million trees in newsprint each year.
Americans discard 4 million tons of office paper every year. That's enough to build a 12 foot-high wall of paper from New York to California.
If Americans recycled every phone book each year, an estimated 650,000 tons of paper could be saved.
Recycling half the world's paper would free 20 million acres of forest land.
Recycling one stack of newspapers about 6 feet tall saves the life of one tree 35 feet tall. Recycling approximately 1 ton of newspaper saves 17 trees.
The EPA has found that making paper from recycled materials results in 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution.
Every ton of recycled paper saves approximately 4 barrels of oil, 4,200 kilowatt hours of energy and enough energy to heat and air-condition the average North American home for almost 6 months.
Recycled paper is made to the same standards as paper made from virgin pulp. Moreover, recycled paper has features which make it more desirable than virgin paper, such as being more opaque, dense, and flexible.
Paper plus cardboard combined make up 73% of the materials in the landfill.
For every 15,000 tons of old newspaper recycled annually, 30 jobs are created to collect the paper, and 40 jobs are created to process the paper.
Making a ton of virgin paper requires 3,688 lbs. of wood, 24,000 gallons of water, 216 lbs. of lime, 360 lbs. of salt cake and 76 lbs. of soda ash. We then have to treat and dispose of 84 lbs. of air pollutants, 36 lbs. of water pollutants and 176 lbs. of solid waste.
Plastic Recycling Facts.
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year...
Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 styrofoam coffee cups every year...
Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
American throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.
The number of plastics recycling businesses has grown to more than 1,790 businesses handling and reclaiming post-consumer plastics.
Today, over 20,000 communities provide recycling services to 200 million people.
The plastics recycling industry provides jobs for nearly 200,000 United States workers
Half of all polyester carpet manufactured in the US is made from recycled soda bottles.
Recycled plastic is also made into plastic lumber, clothing, flower pots, insulation for sleeping bags & ski jackets, car bumpers and more.
Water Bottle Recycling Facts.
In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each, but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfill...
Bottled water costs between $1 and $4 per gallon and 90 percent of the cost is in the bottle, lid and label...
In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each, but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills.
According to the Beverage Marketing Corp, the average American consumed 1.6 gallons of bottled water in 1976. In 2006 that number jumped to 28.3 gallons.
In 2007 we spent $16 billion on bottled water. That's more than we spent on iPods or movie tickets.
In the United States in 2006, bottled water consumption reached a record 8.3 billion gallons. The total amount spent on bottled water was over $11 billion. (Beverage Marketing Corp.)
In 2006, the average American used 167 disposable water bottles, but only recycled 38.
In the United States, 24 percent of bottled water sold is either Pepsi's Aquafina (13 percent of the market) or Coke's Dasani (11 percent of the market). Both brands are bottled, purified municipal water.
Americans send about 38 billion water bottles a year to landfills. Considering more than 24 million gallons of oil - enough to fuel 30,000 cars for a year - are required to produce just one billion bottles, the environmental impact of plastic bottle waste is staggering.
Tire and Battery Recycling Facts.
In the U.S., 920 million tires were used for non-commercial vehicles on the road in 2005, and every year on average, 290 million tires are disposed of. That's about one tire per person in this country alone. Approximately 27 million tires, or 9 percent, are said to be discarded in monofills or landfills.
From 1990 to 2003, the total number of scrap tires going to market increased from 11 million to 233 million. Of all the scrap tires discarded today, over 75 percent are recycled or used for fuel or other applications.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency 99 percent of automobile batteries were recycled, in 2006.
Car batteries have the highest recycling rate of out of all articles that are recycled.
About 60 percent of the worlds lead comes from recycled car batteries.
Lead-acid batteries use over 80 percent of the lead produced in the U.S.