Aluminum Cans
- More than 50% of a new aluminum can is made from recycled aluminum.
- The 36 billion aluminum cans landfilled last year had a scrap value of more than $600 million. Some day we'll be mining our landfills for the resources we've buried.
- Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.
- When you toss out one aluminum can you waste as much energy as if you'd filled the same can half-full of gasoline and poured it into the ground.
- Aluminum cans are recycled into: soda cans, pie plates, license plates, thumbtacks, aluminum foil, and many other items.
Cardboard
- Recycled cardboard only takes 75 percent of the energy needed to make new cardboard and lessens the emission of sulfur dioxide that is produced when making pulp from wood trees.
- Recycling one ton of cardboard saves nine cubic yards of landfill space and 46 gallons of oil.
Glass Bottles and Jars
- Americans throw away enough glass bottles and jars every two weeks to fill the 1.350-foot towers of the former World Trade Center.
- Most bottles and jars contain at least 25% recycled glass.
- Glass never wears out -- it can be recycled forever. We save over a ton of resources for every ton of glass recycled -- 1,330 pounds of sand, 433 pounds of soda ash, 433 pounds of limestone, and 151 pounds of feldspar (a mineral containing varying portions of sodium, potassium, and other elements).
- States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume. Utah does not have a bottle deposit law.
- If all the glass bottles and jars collected through recycling in the U.S. in 1994 were laid end to end, they'd reach the moon and half way back to earth.
- Glass can be recycled into jars, jewelry, bottles, dishes, drinking glasses, coffee mugs and many other items.
Paper Products
Everywhere you look you see one thing: Paper Products.
From posters and notebooks to cardboard boxes and magazines, paper is part of our everyday lives. Paper takes up over 40% of our waste stream, making it the top material that we throw away. That means for every 100 pounds of trash we throw away, about 35 pounds of it is paper! If we could just Recycle one morning newspaper every day, we could save 41,000 trees from being cut down and greatly reduce our carbon footprint.
What is paper recycling?
Paper recycling is the process of manufacturing old paper products and turning them into new, reusable paper products. Recycling old paper products uses 60% less energy than manufacturing it from new materials.
When you recycle cardboard and other paper products you can create millions of new products such as:
- Egg cartons
- Paper towels, tissue, and toilet paper
- Envelopes and copy paper
- Newspaper
- Phonebooks
- Paper bags
- Notebooks
- Stamps
- Business cards
- Calendars
There are so many other products that you can make with recycled paper. And the best thing about paper recycling is that it uses less chemicals and bleaches, which is safer for the environment.
What are the benefits of paper recycling?
- Recycling newspaper saves 14% of landfill space.
- For every ton of newspaper recycled you can save enough energy to power a television for 31 hours.
- Reduces sulfur dioxide emissions.
- Uses less fossil fuels.
- Most paper can be recycled up to 8 times to create new products.
- Leaves more trees for the sustainability of our environment.
- Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 mature trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, and 4,100 kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough energy to power the average American home for five months.
- Recycling paper instead of making it from new material generates 74 percent less air pollution and uses 50 percent less water.
Plastic Products
- Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap Texas.
- Americans go through 25 billion plastic bottles every year.
- 26 recycled PET bottles equals a polyester suit. 5 recycled PET bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket.
- In 1988 we used 2 billion pounds of HDPE just to make bottles for household products. That's about the weight of 90,000 Honda Civics.
- If every American household recycled just one out of every ten HDPE bottles they used, we'd keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year.
- Recycling one ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space.
- PET plastic can be recycled into: clothing, fiberfill for sleeping bags, toys, stuffed animals, rulers and more.
Steel/Tin Cans
- The steel industry's annual recycling saves the equivalent energy to electrically power about 18 million households for a year. Every time a ton of steel is recycled, 2500 pounds of iron ore, 1000 pounds of coal and 40 pounds of limestone is preserved.
- Every day Americans use enough steel and tin cans to make a steel pipe running from Los Angeles to New York... and back. If we only recycle one-tenth of the cans we now throw away, we'd save about 3.2 billion of them every year.
- The average American throws out about 61 lbs. of tin cans every month.
- About 70% of all metal is used just once and then discarded. The remaining 30% is recycled. After 5 cycles, one-fourth of 1% of the metal remains in circulation.
- Recycling steel and tin cans saves 74% of the energy used to produce them.
- Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.
- Americans throw out enough iron and steel to supply all the nation's automakers on a continuous basis.
- A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution and mining wastes by about 70%.
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