10 Little Known Facts About Recycling
In the latest installment of our #WasteNotWantNot series, we look at some little known facts around recycling. Most people know the basics, but how much do you really know about recycling? We pulled 10 facts that we felt were worth sharing about recycling, but it was really hard to choose just 10!
10 Little Known Facts About Recycling
- Recycling just one day’s worth of the New York Times could save 75,000 or more trees.
- On average each year every American uses around 680 pounds of paper and most people just throw it all away instead of recycling it.
- 2,000 pounds of recycled paper can save up to 17 trees, over 350 gallons of oil, and a lot of landfill space.
- Energy is used during the recycling process, but overall recycling helps to conserve energy, and as a result reduces the amount of greenhouse gases emitted.
- Americans will use over 2 and a half million plastic bottles every thirty minutes. Most of these single-use plastic bottles are simply thrown away when they can easily be recycled.
- Discarded disposable plastic bags that end up in the ocean kill over a million sea animals each year.
- Over 60% of the trash that ends in garbage cans could be recycled.
- About 1/3 of the items in most dumps are packaging materials that could be recycled.
- Most people produce about 4.4 pounds of trash per day. This adds up to about 1.5 tons of solid waste per year.
- Recycling one ton of plastic can save up to 2,000 gallons of gasoline.
Did you learn anything from this list? Do you know any recycling facts that didn’t make our list? Let us know in the comments and remember to use the hashtag #WasteNotWantNot!
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