RECYCLING vs. LANDFILL vs. INCINERATING 

On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it. (1)

PLASTIC

*** Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away! (1)

 

**** Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as buring it in an incinerator. (1)

 

***Five PET bottles (plastic soda bottles) yield enough fiber for one extra large T-shirt, one square foot of carpet or enough fiber to fill one ski jacket.(2)

 


GLASS

*** A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill. (1)

 

*** Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable! (1)

*** 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. (1)

  ***Glass beverage containers can be recycled over and over again. But they can also be used for other things you may not expect. Like roads. Marbles. Decorative tiles. Surfboards. And a host of other products and materials. (2)

 

ALUMINUM

*** Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.(1)

 

*** An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!(1)

 

*** Once an aluminum can is recycled, it can be part of a new can within six weeks.(1)

 

***There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can can be recycled.(1)

 

PAPER
***To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down. (1)

 

*** The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.(1)

 

***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!(1)

 

*** The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.(1)

 

***Every ton of recycled office paper saves 380 gallons of oil. (1)

CELL PHONES, COMPUTERS & ELECTRONICS

***Americans discard more than 100 million computers, cellphones and other electronic devices each year. (3)

 

 

BATTERIES

***Each year, Americans throw out almost 180,000 tons of batteries. About 14,000 of those tons are rechargeable batteries; the rest are single-use. (3)

***Americans purchase nearly 3 billion dry-cell batteries every year to power radios, toys, cellular phones, watches, laptop computers, and portable power tools. (3)

***Nearly 99 million wet-cell lead-acid car batteries are manufactured each year. (3)

***On average, each person in the United States discards eight dry-cell batteries per year. (3)

***Lead-acid batteries are the environmental success story of our time. More than 97 percent of all battery lead is recycled. Compared to 55% of aluminum soft drink and beer cans, 45% of newspapers, 26% of glass bottles and 26% of tires, lead-acid batteries top the list of the most highly recycled consumer product. (3)


 



(1) http://members.aol.com/ramola15/funfacts.html   (2) http://www.eco-cell.org/cellwaste.asp (3) http://earth911.org/blog/2007/07/05/how-to-recycle-and-properly-dispose-of-batteries/