Untitled

Recycling Facts

Is Recycling Worthwhile?

Recycling is one of the best environmental success stories of the late 20th century. Recycling, which includes composting, diverted over 72 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators in 2003, up from 34 million tons in 1990—doubling in just 10 years. Recycling turns materials that would otherwise become waste into valuable resources. As a matter of fact, collecting recyclable materials is just the first step in a series of actions that generate a host of financial, environmental, and societal returns. There are several key benefits to recycling. Recycling:

Protects and expands U.S. manufacturing jobs and increases U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace.
Reduces the need for landfilling and incineration.
- Saves energy and prevents pollution caused by the extraction and processing of virgin materials and the manufacture of products using virgin materials.
Decreases emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change.
Conserves natural resources such as timber, water, and minerals.
Helps sustain the environment for future generations.

How does recycling save energy?

Harvesting, extracting, and processing the raw materials used to manufacture new products is an energy-intensive activity. Reducing or nearly eliminating the need for these processes, therefore, achieves huge savings in energy. Recycling aluminum cans, for example, saves 95 percent of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from its virgin source, bauxite. The amount of energy saved differs by material, but almost all recycling processes achieve significant energy savings compared to production using virgin materials.

In 2000, recycling resulted in an annual energy savings of at least 660 trillion BTUs, which equals the amount of energy used in 6 million households annually. In 2005, recycling is conservatively projected to save 900 trillion BTUs, equal to the annual energy use of 9 million households.

What materials are most commonly recycled in the United States?

Click HERE to return to the main BARC page

Many of the Facts and Figures gathered from

www.epa.gov

The American Plastics Council

The Aluminum Association

American Forest and Paper Association

Steel Recycling Institute

Why not just bury it in the landfill?

The item most frequently encountered in municipal landfills is plain old paper—on average, it accounts for more than 40 percent of a landfill's contents. This proportion has held steady for decades and in some landfills has actually risen. Newspapers alone can take up as much as 13 percent of the space in US landfills.

Organic materials, including paper, do not easily biodegrade once they are disposed of in a landfill. Paper is many times more resistant to deterioration when compacted in a landfill than when it is in open contact with the atmosphere. Research by William Rathje, who runs the Garbage Project , has shown that, when excavated from a landfill, newspapers from the 1960s can be intact and readable.

U.S. recycling rates for commonly recycled consumer goods in 2005 are listed below:

Newspapers: 88.9 percent

Corrugated Cardboard Boxes: 71.5 percent

Steel Cans: 62.9 percent

Yard Trimmings: 56.3 percent

Aluminum Beer and Soft Drink Cans: 44.8 percent

Scrap Tires: 35.6 percent

Magazines: 38.5 percent

Plastic Soft Drink Bottles: 34.1 percent

Plastic HDPE Milk and Water Bottles: 28.8 percent

Glass Containers: 25.3 percent

Some Amazing Facts about Recyclable Materials

PAPER

By recycling one ton (2,000 lbs.) of paper, we save: 17 trees; 6,953 gallons of water; 463 gallons of oil; 587 pounds of air pollution; 3.06 cubic yards of landfill space and 4,077 Kilowatt hours of energy.

The average American uses 650 lbs. of paper per year.

Around 45% of the paper Americans use each year (over 47 million tons) is recovered for recycling. This is made into a wide variety of goods such as new newsprint, boxes and office paper, paper towels, tissue products, insulation, cereal boxes, molded packaging, hydro-mulch, gypsum wallboard - even compost and kitty litter!

PLASTIC

Americans go through 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

Recycling a ton of PET saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space.

Half of all polyester carpet manufactured in the US is made from recycled soda bottles.

Recycled plastic is also made into plastic lumber, clothing, flower pots, insulation for sleeping bags & ski jackets, car bumpers and more.

ALUMINUM

Aluminum cans made their first appearance in America in 1953.

We use about 392 cans per person per year.

62.8 billion or 63.5 % of aluminum cans are recycled annually.

Recycling aluminum saves about 95% of the energy it would take to produce aluminum from its original source

Aluminum recycling is so efficient that it can take as few as 60 days for a can to be collected, melted down and made into a new can sitting on a grocery store shelf.

STEEL

The steel from the more than 84% of appliances (39 million) recycled last year yielded enough steel to build about 160 football stadiums.

Recycling just one car saves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal and 120 pounds of limestone.

Through recycling each year, the steel industry saves enough energy to power 18 million homes - one-fifth of the households in the US.

The average American uses 142 steel cans annually.

Booneville Area Recycling Coalition: Think before you Trash it!

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse