5 things you need to know

1. Most of the things that we throw away end up on landfill sites, landfill can emit high levels of carbon dioxide and methane, neither of which are good for our atmosphere.
2. Despite the fact that glass is totally recyclable, only 15 per cent of the glass we throw away is recycled.
3. Every Sunday, 90 per cent of all newspapers are thrown away, which is the equivalent of putting 500,000 trees in a landfill site.
4. Waste food can also be recycled simply and safely at home if you make your own compost, which can provide any flowers or plants you may have with a nice eco-friendly fertiliser.
5. A good place to start if you are interested in finding out about recycling in your area is to go to your local council’s web site.

BY TH. He got this from http://www.need2know.co.uk/environment/recycling

TRASH / LANDFILLS

* Although 75% of our trash can be recycled, the EPA set a national goal of 25% for 1992.

* The first real recycling program was introduced in New York City in the 1890s. The city’s first recycling plant was built in 1898.

* By 1924, 83% of American cities were separating some trash items to be reused.

* About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material!

* Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted.

* New Jersey has the highest recycling rate of all the states–56%!

* The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world’s people generate 40% of the world’s waste.

* This chart shows the composition of an average garbage dump. Notice how much of it is recyclable!! 

By TH EH and DIM we got this info from http://members.aol.com/ramola15/funfacts.html

PLASTIC / STYROFOAM

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

* Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!

* Americans throw away 25,000,000 plastic beverage bottles every hour!

* Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as buring it in an incinerator.

* American throw away 25,000,000,000 styrofoam coffee cups every year. 

By TH EH and DIM We got this information from http://members.aol.com/ramola15/funfacts.html

Light Bulbs

*Every year Americans buy over a billion incandescent lightbulbs. That’s three acres of bulbs every day.
*A 60-watt incandescent bulb lasts about 750 hours; a fluorescent bulb with 1/3 the wattage will generate the same light and burn for 7,500 to 10,000 hours in five to ten years of normal use.
*Substituting a compact fluorescent light for a traditional bulb will keep a half-ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere over the life of the bulb.
By TH and EH. We got this from: http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html#top

Newspaper Facts

*Every day America cuts down two million trees-but throws away about 42 million newspapers. That means the equivalent of about 500,000 trees is dumped into landfills every week.
*If everyone who subscribes to the New York Times recycled, we’d keep over 6,000 tons of pollution out of the air.
*It takes an entire forest–over 500,000 trees to supply Americans with their Sunday newspapers every week.

From: http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html#top

Food and packaging

$1 out of every $11 Americans spend for food goes for packaging.
*Americans dump the equivalent of more than 21 million shopping bags full of food into landfills every year.

By TH and Eh. We got this from: http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html#top

Rubber Facts

*It takes half a barrel of crude oil to produce the rubber for just one truck tire.
*Every two weeks, Americans wear almost 50 million pounds of rubber off their tires. That’s enough to make 3 1/4 million new tires from scratch.
*Producting one pound of recycled rubber versus one pound of new rubber requires only 29% of the energy.

From: http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html#top

Garbage Facts

*In 1865, an estimated 10,000 hogs roamed New York City, eating garbage. Now, one of every six U.S. trucks is a garbage truck.
* In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his/her adult weight in garbage. If you add it up, this means that a 150-lb. adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs of trash for his/her children.
*The average baby generates a ton of garbage every year.
*The landfill gas produced daily at Fresh Kills Landfill is enough fuel to heat 50,000 homes.

From: http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html#top

Junk Mail Facts

*If only 100,000 people stopped their junk, mail, we could save up to 150,000 trees annually. If a million people did this, we could save up to a million and a half trees.

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

*The average American still spends 8 full months of his/her life opening junk mail.

From: http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html#top

Plastic

*Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap Texas.

*Americans go through 2.5 million 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.\

TH got this from: http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html#top