So as a kid, you may not care that much about the Earth. You may be thinking, “What difference can I make? I’m just a kid!” Well, any one thing that someone does can make that much of a difference, for better or for worse.
*Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours — that’s the same cost of half of a gallon of gasoline.
*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 can be recycled.
*A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel. In one year in the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy to heat and light 18,000,000 homes!
*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 newspaper was 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 a year.
*During World War II when raw materials were scarce, 33% of all paper was recycled. After the war, this number decreased sharply.
*The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 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.
*When you smell a dump, what you’re actually smelling is the paper in the dump!
*Each ton (2000 pounds) 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 air pollution!
*The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
*Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!
*The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.
*Mining and transporting raw materials for glass produces about 385 pounds of waste for every ton of glass that is made. If recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw materials, the waste is cut by more than 80%.
*The highest point in Ohio is “Mount Rumpke,” which is actually a mountain of trash at the Rumpke sanitary landfill!
*Although 75% of our trash can be recycled, the EPA set a national goal of 25% for 1992.
*Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted.
*New Jersey has the highest recycling rate of all the states–56%!
*The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world’s people generate 40% of the world’s 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.
*Between 5 and 15% of what we throw away contains hazardous substances.
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