Fun Recycling Facts

– 60 days is how quickly an aluminum can might be collected, transported for recycling, melted down, made into a new can, refilled and placed back on the grocer’s shelf.

– The U.S. EPA estimates that 75 percent of what Americans throw in the trash could actually be recycled.

– Americans go through 25 billion plastic bottles every year.

– The junk mail Americans receive in one day could produce enough energy to heat 250,000 homes.

– Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

– Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.

– 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 be recycled.

– Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.

– The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.

– Each ton (2000 pounds) 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. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!

– Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!

– An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space — that’s almost 40 football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.