- Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
- If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.
- The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most are packaging and junk mail-all of which can be recycled!
- In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic yards of landfill space
- Recycling just one aluminum can save enough energy to run a television set for 3 hours!
- That can return to the grocer's shelf in as little as 60 days after collection.
- Most aluminum recovered is used to manufacture new cans.
- There is no limit to the number of times an aluminum can be recycled.
- Every pound of recycled PET plastic used in place of virgin material reduces energy use in plastic production by 84%!
- Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour - and most of them are thrown away!
- Each year, we use 1 billion plastic shopping bags, creating 300,000 tons of landfill waste.
- On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.
- The recyclable materials in the U.S. waste stream would generate over $7 billion if they were recycled. That's equivalent to Donald Trump's net worth.
- About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material!
- The U.S. recycles approx. 32% of its total waste. Let's pick it up!
Recycling Statistics
Facts and figures about the global impact of recycling.