Did you know…
The average American creates
4.4 pounds of waste per day.
Each year a typical family consumes:
- 182 gallons of soda
- 29 gallons of juice
- 104 gallons of milk
- 26 gallons of bottled water
That's a lot of containers, make sure they're recycled!!
Recycling all of your home’s newsprint, cardboard, glass, &
metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 850 pounds a
year.
-Campus Life Sustainability-
Recycling Trivia: Paper
Recycling 1 ton of paper saves:
- 17 trees- 35 feet tall
- 380 gallons of oil- enough fuel to run the
average car for 1260 miles
- 4100 kilowatts of energy- enough power for
the average home for 6 months
- 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space- the size of
one family size pick-up truck
- 60 pounds of air pollution
-Campus Life Sustainability-
Recycling Trivia: Plastic
- Americans use 25,000,000 plastic bottles
every hour!
- Five recycled soft drink bottles make
enough fiberfill for a man’s ski jacket.
- Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown
into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000
sea creatures every year!
- Recycling plastic saves twice as much
energy as burning it in an incinerator.
-Campus Life Sustainability-
Recycling Trivia: Glass
- Glass can be reused an infinite number
of times.
- A glass bottle would take 4000 years
or more to decompose!
- Recycling one glass bottle verses one
new bottle made from raw materials produces:
- 20% less air pollution
- 50% less water pollution
- Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to run a
100-watt light bulb for four hours!
-Campus Life Sustainability-
Recycling Trivia: Aluminum
- Americans use over 80,000,000,000
aluminum soda cans every year!
- A used aluminum can is recycled and
back on the grocery shelf as a new can
in as little as 60 days!
- There is no limit to the amount of times aluminum can be
recycled.
- Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a
TV for three hours, the equivalent of using half a gallon
of gasoline!
-Campus Life Sustainability-
“Recycling Trivia” sources:
EPA & NASA
Center for Ecological Technology
University Colorado at Boulder
Colorado Recycles, 1995
Worldwatch Institute, 1996
Windstar Institute
Trash to Cash, 1996