Reasons to Recycle

  1. We use enough plastic wrap to wrap all of Idaho every year.
  2. Across the country, Allied Waste's recycling efforts result in an estimated saving of 20 million trees, five billion kilowatt hours of energy, and 8.5 billion gallons of water each year. From its 53 recycling centers across the nation, nearly two million tons of recyclables are removed from the waste stream.
  3. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to keep a 100-watt bulb burning for almost four hours, or to operate a television for three hours.
  4. Tossing away one aluminum can wastes as much energy as pouring out half of that can's volume, if it were filled with gasoline. Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to rebuild an entire commercial air fleet every three months.
  5. Every year enough paper is thrown away to make a 12-foot wall from New York to California.
  6. Energy saved each year recycling steel would power Los Angeles for eight years.
  7. Recycling decreases the burning of fossil fuels and lessens the carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons emitted into the atmosphere. In addition, recycling slows the harvest of trees, maintaining the carbon dioxide conversion benefit of forests.
  8. Making paper uses more water per ton than any other product in the world.
  9. If we recycled every plastic bottle, we would keep 2 billion tons of plastic out of landfills.*
  10. Recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water. Recycling old paper rather than using new timber to produce paper saves 60 percent of the energy usually required.
  11. Every person in the United States generates almost five pounds of solid waste every day.

* Source: EPA