Recycling Facts and Figures

• In 1999, recycling and composting activities prevented about 64 million tons of material from ending up in landfills and incinerators. Today, this country recycles 32.5 percent of its waste, a rate that has almost doubled during the past 15 years.
• While recycling has grown in general, recycling of specific materials has grown even more drastically: 52 percent of all paper, 31 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles, 45 percent of all aluminum beer and soft drink cans, 63 percent of all steel packaging, and 67 percent of all major appliances are now recycled.
• Twenty years ago, only one curbside recycling program existed in the United States, which collected several materials at the curb. By 2006, about 8,660 curbside programs had sprouted up across the nation. As of 2005, about 500 materials recovery facilities had been established to process the collected materials.

Recycling aluminum cans in the United States in 1996 saved enough energy to power a city the size of Philadelphia for one year.
from World Watch Institute, December 1998  

Laid end-to-end, the 50.7 billion cans wasted in 2001 would encircle the Earth 153 times.  
Between 1990 and 2000, Americans wasted 7.1 million tons of cans: enough to manufacture 316,000 Boeing 737 airplanes.
from Container Recycling Institute, Jennifer Gitlitz, "Trashed Cans: The Global
     Environmental Impacts of Aluminum Can Wasting in America," 2002  

Recycling one ton of aluminum is equivalent to not releasing 13 tons of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) into the air.
from Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, "Rethinking Recycling:
     An Oregon Waste Reduction Curriculum," 2001

It takes approximately one million years for a glass bottle to break down at the landfill.
from Environmental Protection Agency, 2002  

2001 recovery rates for glass in other countries: Austria: 83 percent, Sweden: 84 percent, Germany: 87 percent, Belgium and Norway: 88 percent, Finland: 91 percent, and Switzerland: 92 percent.
from European Glass Container Federation (FEVE), February 2003  

US glass recovery rate for 2000 was just more than 26 percent.
from Environmental Protection Agency, "Municipal Solid Waste
     in the United States: 2000 Facts and Figures," 2002  

Used glass or "cullet" melts at a lower temperature than raw materials, reducing the demand for energy and lowering production costs.
from Clean Washington Center, "Saving Energy with Cullet and
     Preheating," November 1996  

The energy saved from recycling one wine bottle will operate a 100-watt light bulb for three hours.
from Calculation, courtesy of Robert Kirby, manager for R & D,
     Sandhill Industries, June 2003  

If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year! Each ton 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 air pollution!  That's because one tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.  

Americans throw away enough office and writing paper each year to build a wall twelve-feet high stretching from New York City to Los Angeles.

For all the world to live as an American or Canadian, we would need two more earths to satisfy everyone, three more if population should double, and 12 earths if worldwide standards of living should double during the next 40 years.
from Natural Capitalism; Paul Hawken, Amory and L. Hunter,
     Lovin Little Brown & Co., September 1999  

The area of forest required to provide for each U.S. citizen’s annual wood needs is 1.7 acres, compared to the global average of 0.7 acres.
from Forest Products Journal, pp. 10-21, January 2001  

Incinerating 10,000 tons of waste creates one job; landfilling 10,000 tons of waste creates six jobs; recycling 10,000 tons of waste creates 36 jobs.
from Environmental Protection Agency, "Resource Conservation
     Challenge: Campaigning Against Waste," EPA 530-F-02-033, 2002  

In 2000, the national recycling rate of 30 percent saved the equivalent of more than five billion gallons of gasoline, reducing dependence on foreign oil by 114 million barrels.
from Environmental Protection Agency, "Resource Conservation
     Challenge: Campaigning Against Waste," EPA 530-F-02-033, 2002  

By recycling all of its paper, plastic, and corrugated waste generated in a year, an office building of 7,000 workers could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1,200 metric tons of carbon equivalent. This is equivalent to taking 900 cars off the road in one year.
from Environmental Protection Agency, "Solid Waste and
     Emergency Response," EPA 530-F-02-034, 2002