• This chart shows the composition of an average garbage dump. Notice how much of it is recyclable!!
• One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.
• Every day American businesses generate enough paper to circle the earth 20 times!
• Paper products make up the largest part (approx 40%) of our trash.
• Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper per year, or about 580 pounds per person.
• Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4,000 kilowatts of energy and 7,000 gallons of water!!
• Recycling a stack of newspapers just 3 feet high can save one tree!
• Disposable diapers last centuries in landfills. An average baby will go through 8,000 of them!
• When you throw something ‘away’, it doesn’t go away! Trash is either burned, buried, recycled or dumped into rivers, oceans, or roadside.
• It takes a 15-year old tree to produce 700 grocery bags.
• Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
• Out of ever $10 spent buying things, $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away. Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.
• McDonald's saves 68,000,000 pounds of packaging per year just by pumping soft drink syrup directly from the delivery truck into tanks in the restaurant, instead of shipping the syrup in cardboard boxes.
• A typical family consumes 182 gallons of pop, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers -- make sure they're recycled!
• Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!
• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
• Once an aluminum can is recycled, it can be part of a new can within six weeks There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can can be recycled.

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