Aluminum Recycling

• A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can in as little as 60 days.  
• Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames and lawn furniture can also be recycled.
• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
• Because so many of them are recycled, aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA estimates.
• An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now.
• There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can may be recycled.
• We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year.
• Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.
• An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space.  All that foil is recyclable but not many people realize it.

Steel Recycling

• Recycling steel and tin cans saves 74% of the energy used to make them.
• A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces water pollution, air pollution and mining waste by about 70%.
• Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans each day.

Paper Recycling

• To produce each week’s Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
• Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
• If all our newspapers were recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year.
• If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees per year.
• The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
• Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
• Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper per year; about 680 pounds per person.
• The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year.  Most is packaging and junk mail.
• 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 of pollution.
• The construction cost of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.
• Rain forests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

For additional information and to see some of the things Elgin recycling does to save trees and otherwise keep our planet green, click here.

Plastic Recycling

• Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour and most of them are thrown away.
• Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
• Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
• Enough plastic bottles are thrown away in the U.S. each year to circle the Earth four times.

Copper Recycling

• It has been estimated that at least 80% of all copper ever mined is still in existence, having been recycled time and time again.
• Copper can be considered a renewable resource because it can be recycled without any loss of quality (chemical or physical properties).
• About 40% of copper used annually is recycled from prior uses.

Solid Waste and Landfills

• About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material.
• The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1609 pounds per person per year.  This means that 5% of the world’s people generate 40% of the world’s waste.
• The highest point in Hamilton County, Ohio is Monte Rumpke.  It is actually a mountain of trash at the Rumpke sanitary landfill towering 1045 ft. above sea level.
• The U.S population discards each year 16,000,000,000 diapers, 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, and 220,000,000 car tires.
• Out of every $10 spent buying things, $1 goes for packaging that is thrown away.  Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.
• On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 per ton to send it to the landfill and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.