Resources Saved by Recycling
1 Ton of Newspaper
SAVES 17 TREES
& an amount of energy equal to
100 gallons of gasoline
If Americans would simply recycle their paper, and use recycled paper,
we could cut our municipal waste by 50%. We could save most of the water,
energy, air pollution, and all the billions of trees that go into making
paper out of forests. Recycling paper creates five times more jobs and
it even saves money.
Making recycled paper uses 30% to 55% less energy than making paper from
trees.
If you recycle a foot-tall stack of newspapers, you save enough energy
to take a hot shower every day for a week.
Other benefits of recycling: 95% less air pollution and one tree saved
for every 150 pounds of paper you recycle.
Americans already recycle 24 millions tons of paper a year, 29% of the
paper we use. But there's room to improve. More than 50 million tons worth
of room.
For every household that recycles its daily newspaper, 5 trees are spared
every year.
Today, more than 50% of the printing and writing paper made in this country
still uses virgin timber fiber. The United States makes and uses more than
80 million tons of paper every year, but less than a third of that is from
recycled sources.
Recycled Content Paper
Each ton of paper made from recycled paper over that made from virgin resources
salvages about 3,700 pounds of lumber and 24,000 gallons of water, along
with 4,100 kilowatts of energy.
Recycled content in writing paper reduces energy use by 33%, air pollution
by 73% and water pollution by 35%.
Just one 3-subject notebook or ream of paper saves 10.2 gallons of water
and prevents the release of 2.1 pounds of carbon dioxide.
Also, recycled paper saves more than trees. Compared to virgin paper,
making recycled paper results in less paper being sent to landfills. |
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Over the past 30 years, the waste produced in
the United States has more than doubled, from 88 million tons in 1960 to
about 232 million tons in 2002. Some of this increase is linked
to U.S. population growth. Lifestyles have changed,
too. People are buying more convenience items, more disposables, and
they choose from a wider variety of products. |
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38.1% of waste is from household paper. If households
were to compost food and yard waste, along with recycling paper, plastics,
and glass there would be a 77% decrease in municipal solid waste.
By weight, paper accounts for 36% & plastics account for 11%
of waste in landfills. |
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| Negative effects of landfilling include:
pollution of groundwater and surface water
soil contamination
release of global warming gases monitoring and remediation
costs that will span centuries.
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| Using recycled materials
versus raw materials saves the economy about $15 billion in energy fee
and another $15 billion by reducing the municipal solid waste of the United
States. (EPA) |
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Resources Saved by Recycling
1 Ton of Plastics
an amount of energy equal to
1-2,000 gallons of gasoline
In the last few decades, plastic use in North America has risen dramatically.
Plastic is probably the most popular with the on-the-go society of today
but also most costly to the environment. There are good reasons why it's
so popular -- it's lightweight, waterproof, strong and break-resistant.
But plastics are made from petroleum and most don't decompose for a long
time. In 1987, the US used almost one billion barrels of petroleum just
to manufacture plastics. That's enough to meet U.S. demand for imported
oil for five months. We can save that oil, and the disposal problems of
plastic by recycling it.
Incinerating 10,000 tons of plastic waste creates 1 job, landfilling the
same amount creates 6 jobs while recycling the same 10,000 tons creates
36 jobs.
Plastic bags and more than 45,000 tons of plastic thrown into the ocean
kill as many as 1,000,000 seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals annually.
Since 1950, we have consumed as much as all the generations before us combined.
Plastics can take up to 400 years to break down in a landfill.
56% of recycled PET finds a market in the manufacture of carpet and clothing.
29% of recycled HDPE bottles go into making new bottles.
If you lined up all the polystyrene foam cups made in just 1 day they would
circle the earth.
In 1 year there would be enough waste to fill landfills stretching from
the Earth to the Moon.
Recycled materials can return to the marketplace in as little as 30 days.
It takes 5 PET bottles to make 1 square foot of polyester carpet, an extra
large t-shirt or filling for a ski jacket.
It takes 2 plastic soft drink bottles to make enough polyester fibre for
a baseball cap.
Most families throw away about 88 lb plastic a year.
There are about 1,000 milk jugs and other bottles in a recycled plastic
park bench.
Oil which is a non-renewable resource is in all plastic items.
Ford motor company indicates that 75% of every vehicle is recyclable.
The energy saved by recycling 1 bottle will power a computer for 25 minutes.
Recycled plastic uses 88% less energy. |
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Resources Saved by Recycling
1 Ton of Aluminum
an amount of energy equal to
2,350 gallons of gasoline
Of all the recyclable items, an aluminum can is the easiest to make
into a new one. It melts at a relatively low temperature and saves a great
deal of mining.
It takes enormous amounts of electricity to refine aluminum from its ore.
Recycling aluminum requires only a tenth as much electricity as making
the same aluminum from bauxite ore.
Using recycled content instead of bauxite ore to make aluminum cans reduces,
water pollution by 97% and air pollution by 95%.
Discarding an aluminum can wastes as much energy as if you filled the can
half full of gasoline and poured it on the ground.
It takes barely as much energy as there is in a tablespoon of gasoline
to recycle that can.
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| When a pound of municipal material is recycled,
industry avoids wasting many more pounds of mining and manufacturing wastes
caused by extracting and processing virgin materials into finished goods. |
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| According to Maryland
4-H, each month with maximum participation, the average 100 unit apartment
inhabitants could save 26.86 yards of landfill space by recycling. |
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Resources Saved by Recycling
1 Ton of Glass
an amount of energy equal to
10 gallons of oil
Glass uses a variety of resources that accumulate to a ton of savings
per ton of glass recycled. Resources saved by glass recycling are as follows:
1,330 lbs of sand, 433 lbs of soda ash, 433 lbs of limestone, and 151 lbs
of feldspar, as well as the resources indirectly saved by the reduction
in energy use.
Recycling glass reduces air pollution by 20%, and water pollution by 50%.
Every time you recycle a glass bottle, you save enough energy to light
a 100 watt bulb for 4 hours.
Recycled glass uses only 2/3 the energy needed to manufacture glass from
raw materials.
Glass manufacturing with recycled content reduces energy use by 5% and
manufacturing waste by 75%.
For every bottle you recycle, you save enough energy to run a TV for 1.5
hours.
Refillable bottles don't need to be melted down before they're reused so
they save 4 times as much energy.
Only 27% of the glass used in the United States is recycled.
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Resources Saved by Recycling
1 Ton of Iron
an amount of energy equal to
1 ton of coal
Recycling tin cans reduces energy use by 74%, air pollution by 85%,
solid waste by 95%, and water pollution by 76% compared
to wasting them. Americans only recycle 5% of their tin cans. |
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| To create just 1 lb
of consumer goods, manufacturers create 5 lb of waste. Almost everything
that is thrown away could be recycled to save natural resources. |
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