Recycling Facts

• Paper waste comprises almost 40% of our municipal solid waste stream.
• When you smell a dump, what you're actually smelling is the paper in the dump.
• If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.
• Each ton (2,000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4,000 kilowatts of energy, and 7,000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution.
• Seventeen trees saved can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that amount of paper would create 1,500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
• More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product.
• Once an aluminum can is recycled, it can be part of a new can within six weeks.
• An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now.
• There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can can be recycled.
• Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour. Most of them are thrown away.
• Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
• The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.
• A modern glass bottle would take 4,000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.