Recycling Facts Sheet

 (http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html)

Paper

·      Recycling 1 Ton of paper saves:

o    17 mature trees,

o   7,000 Gallons/Water

o   3 cubic yards of landfill space

o   2 barrels of oil, and

o   4,100 kw hours/electricicy (enough energy to power a home for 5 months)

·      More than 56% of paper consumed in the US in ’07 was recycled.  That equals 360/lbs for each person in the Country. http://www.paperrecycles.org/paper_environment/index.html

·      400 paper mills use recovered materials for their paper producing process

·      We each use roughly one 100ft tree by way of paper and wood products/year

Water

·      If all US residential homes installed water-efficient appliances, the country would save more than 3 Trillion Gallons of water and more than $18 Billion dollars per year!

·      If 1 out of every 100 residential homes converted to water-efficient fixtures, we would roughly save 100 Million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year and 80,000 TONS of GHG (GreenHouse Gas Emissions).  That’s roughly taking 15,000 vehicles from the road for 1 year!

·      If your toilet is from 1992 or earlier you probably have an inefficient model using 3.5-6 Gallons/flush.  Now you can install 1.3 Gallons/flush OR Zero-Gallons/flush.

·      Faucets generally flow 2 Gallons/Minute. Save 8 Gallons/Day (240/month) by turning it off while brushing your teeth.

·      Americans use an average of 100 gallons of water each day

·      Surveys have showed 36 states anticipate water shortages by 2013

·      56 billion kilowatt-hours per year- the amount of electricity consumed by public water supplying and treating facilities

·      5 minutes of a running faucet equals roughly a 14 hour run time of a 60-watt light bulb

·      Bath= 70 Gallons/Water; Shower= up to 30 Gallons/Water (get a high-efficiency shower-head.

·      Outdated washing machines use about 40 Gallons/load; high-efficient models use less than 28 Gallons/load

Aluminum

·      Recycling aluminum saves roughly 95% of the energy needed to produce new aluminum from raw materials.  Energy saved by recycling 1 Ton equals the amount of energy the average American home consumes over a 10 year period! Keep America Beautiful

·      Americans throw away enough aluminum they could rebuild our commercial air fleet in 1 Month!

·      Recycling tin and steel saves 74% of energy used to produce virgin steel.

·      100 Million- Amount of cans used/day

·      Americans could supply the nation’s automakers on a continuous basis with the amount of iron and steel they throw out

·      More than 50% of cans are recycled

Glass

·      In 1994 if all glass bottles/jars were laid end to end it would reach the moon and half way back to earth.

·      Glass can be recycled forever.

General Garbage

·      The Average American will throw 600 times their weight (90,000 lbs/47.5 Tons of trash) in garbage over their lifetime.