Recycling!!

Recycling is the process of taking a product at the end of its useful life and using all or part of it to make another product. The process of turning one products useful parts into a new product is done to conserve on the consumption of resources, energy and space used in landfills. By recycling 1 plastic bottle not only saves anywhere from 100 to 1000 years in the landfill but also saves the environment from the emissions in producing new bottles as well as the oil used to produce that bottle. The internationally recognized symbol for recycling includes three arrows moving in a triangle. Each arrow represents a different part of the recycling process, from collection to re-manufacture to resale. Recycling reduces our waste sent to landfills, and making new products out of recycled ones reduces the amount of energy needed in production. For every 1 ton of plastic that is recycled we save the equivalent of 2 people’s energy use for 1 year, the amount of water used by 1 person in 2 month’s time and almost 2000 pounds of oil.

Recycling Aluminum Cans:

A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest! Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline. More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product. Once an aluminum can is recycled, it can be part of a new can within six weeks. Because so many of them are recycled, aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA estimates. 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. We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year. At one time, aluminum was more valuable than gold!





Recycling Paper:

To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down. Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees. If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year! If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year. If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket goes through 60,500,000 paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are in the U.S.The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year. The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years. Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.

Recycling Plastic:

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 burning it in an incinerator. American throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.

Recycling Glass Bottles:

Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable. 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. A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill. Mining and transporting raw materials for glass produces about 385 pounds of waste for every ton of glass that is made. If recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw materials, the waste is cut by more than 80%.








Important Facts About Recycling

1. .A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers -- make sure they're recycled!
2. Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
3. A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers that can all be recycled!
4. About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is only 28%.
5. Every month Americans throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper (think: Empire State Building), but all of these jars are recyclable!
6. Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures a year! Ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It's twice the size of Texas and is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. It's also 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons.
7. Recycling one ton (about 2,000 pounds) of paper saves 17 trees, two barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for six months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of pollution.
8. The 17 trees saved by recycling one ton of paper can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air each year.
9. If all of our newspapers were recycled, we could save about 250 million trees each year! If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we could save about 25 million trees each year.
10. More than 20 million Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. Believe it not, ALL that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it so most it goes in the trash!
11. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours. In spite of this, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every three months!
12. More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
13. Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!
14. A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
15. Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Oil can be recycled, re-refined and used again, reducing our reliance on imported oil.
16. On average, each one of us produces 4.4 pounds of solid waste each day. This adds up to almost a ton of trash per person, per year.
17. The average American uses 650 pounds of paper each year – 100 million tons of wood could be saved each year if all that paper was recycled.


*To find out more information about recycling in your area, you can go to local.com or visit your local recycling center. Recycle Reduce Reuse, close the loop.