Comprehensive Guide to Recycling

A Guide to recycling: Learn facts about Recycle Aluminum, Glass, Plastics, Steel, Paper, and More

Table Of Contents

Aluminum can be recycled using 5% of the energy used to make the original product.
Recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television or computer for three hours.
Americans throw enough aluminum away every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.
Using recycled aluminum instead of virgin materials decreases water and air pollution and energy use by 95%.
You can make 20 cans out of recycled material with the same amount of energy it takes to make one new one.

Recycling 1 glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours.
Americans throw away over 11 million tons of glass bottles and jars each year.
Recycling saves 25-30% of the energy used to make glass from virgin materials.

Americans throw away enough plastic bottles each year to circle the earth four times.
Every hour, we throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles (22 billion plastic bottles per year).
Five recycled plastic bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket.

Every ton of steel recycled saves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal, and
120 pounds of limestone.
Enough energy is saved each year by recycling steel to supply Los Angeles with electricity for
almost 10 years.
The steel industry recycles nearly 19 billion steel cans into new products each year – about 600 cans recycled every second!

Recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees.
Every Sunday, the U.S. wastes nearly 90% of all the recyclable newspapers. This wastes about 500,000 trees.
One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.
Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper per year, or 580 pounds per person.
More than 1/3 of all paper fiber used to make paper comes from recycled paper.

Almost one third of the waste stream by weight are organic materials like food, leaves, and grass.
Each person in Massachusetts creates about 530 pounds of food and yard waste each year. If all that material was piled onto a football field, the pile would be 2,067 feet high, higher than Mt. Wachusett.
If wasted food was a country, it would be the third largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world, after the US and China.
A 1000-square-foot area of lawn can generate up to 500 pounds of grass clippings in
a single growing season.
Use of compost can reduce the need and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Americans receive almost 4.5 million tons of junk mail per year.
About 44% of junk mail is never opened.
Every person in the US receives the equivalent of one and a half trees per year or
approximately 560 pieces of junk mail per year.
The average person gets 1.5 personal letter per week compared to 10.8 pieces of junk mail.
The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year – mostly packaging and junk mail.
Approximately 13% of the solid waste mass that makes up our landfills are paper and paperboard.
100 million trees are ground up each year to produce junk mail.
Your name is typically worth 3 to 20 cents each time it is sold.