The first time I read these facts I was blown away. Literally my mouth fell open. I had no idea that the items that I had been throwing away were so valuable. I have always had an awareness about recycling but this list put it in another light. A light that I could totally understand and relate to. My hope is that someone reading this will also have that reaction and will become aware that what they may be throwing in the garbage isn't really garbage after all.
PAPER- Since this is the number one product in our Landfills (by a long shot) this section, I thought, really needed to be emphasized.
-75,000 trees are used for the Sunday edition of the New York Times each week, yet only 30% of newspapers are recycled in the United States.
-Only 29% of our paper is recycled, while figures for Korea and Mexico, for example, are 74% and 67% (a bit pathetic, don't ya think)
-Making paper from recycled paper uses 30-50% less energy than making paper from trees AND reduces the air pollution involved in the production process by 95%
-3 billion of the 4.7 billion magazines delivered to newsstands each year never reach a reader- That is enough to circle the earth 20 times!
-More than 35 million trees - equivalent to an area that size of the Rocky Mountain National Park - are logged annually to print 12 billion magazine copies.
-90% of magazines are discarded within a year, yet less than 20% are recycled!
-Every ton of recycled paper substituted for non-recyccled paper saves 17 trees
and 380 gallons of oil. (I love ending on a high note)
ALUMINUM- Don't underestimate the Soda can!
-Recycling one (JUST 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 (Don't most of us drink at least one soda/beer a day?).
-Every ton of recycled aluminum saves 95% of the energy needed to make new aluminum.
-You can make 20 cans out of recycled material with the same amount of energy it takes to make 1 new one.
PLASTIC-This stuff has a very long landfill life.
-It takes 100-400 years to break down plastic in a landfill
-Five 2 liter recycled water bottles produce enough fiberfill to make a ski jacket.
-Each year, 352 million pounds of plastic are dumped into the ocean (Do fish eat plastic? I guess I missed that day of school.)
- Those plastics that are thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year. (maybe it is not such a good diet).
-Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every HOUR, and most of them are thrown away. (Are we really that wasteful?)
GLASS-This stuff has an even longer landfill life (I feel sorry for all of those spaghetti jars crying out in the night because they aren't biodegrading).
-It takes approximately ONE MILLION years for a glass bottle to breakdown at a land fill.
-The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle will operate a 100 watt light bulb for FOUR hours.
-We get 27.8 lbs. of air pollution for every ton of new glass produced. Recycling that glass reduces pollution by 14-20%.
Thank You to the University of California at Berkeley and the US Environmental Protection Agency for all of these facts.
