Interesting Recycling Facts
Here are a potporrouri of interesting facts about recycling for your entertainment and education:
Interesting Recycling Facts / Water
- A running faucet wastes 2.5 gallons of water each minute.
- A dishwasher uses 11 gallons of water per use.
- 75 percent of all water used in the household is used in the bathroom.
- A toilet made in 1992 or earlier uses up to 60 percent more water per flush than newer high efficiency toilets.
- Turning of the tap while brushing your teeth in the morning and before bedtimes can save up to 8 gallons per day. This is a savings of 240 gallons per month.
- Running your faucet for 5 minutes uses up enough energy to run a 60 watt light bulb for 14 hours.
- A full bath tub uses 70 gallons of water. A 5 minute shower only uses 10-25 gallons.
Interesting Recycling Facts / Paper
- Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 mature trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, and 4000 kilowatt hours of electricity. This is enough energy to power the average American home for 5 months.
- The process of recycling paper instead of making it from new materials generates 74 percent less air pollution and uses 50 percent less water.
- Manufacturing recycled paper uses 60 percent of the energy needed to make paper from new materials.
- Over 73 percent of all newspapers are recovered for recycling. About 33 percent of this is used to make newsprint the rest is used to make paperboard, tissue, or insulation.
- A little more than 48 percent of all office paper is recycled. This is used to make writing papers, paperboard, tissue, and insulation.
Interesting Recycling Facts / Metal
- Recycling steel and tin cans saves 74 percent of the energy used to make them.
- Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.
- Americans throw out enough iron and steel to continuously supply all the auto makers in the entire nation.
- A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces water pollution, air pollution, and mining waste by about 70 percent.
- When you throw away an aluminum can you waste as much energy as if you’d filled the can half full of gasoline and poured it into the ground.
- Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans each day.
- Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100 watt light bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, and a TV for 2 hours.
Interesting Recycling Facts / Plastic
- Enough plastic is produced in the United States each year to shrink wrap Texas.
- In 1998 Americans used 2 billion pounds of HDPE to make plastic bottles for household products. That’s the equivalent weight of 90,000 Honda civics.
- Approximately 88 percent of the energy is saved when plastic is made from plastic rather than from the raw materials of gas and oil.
- Enough plastic bottles are thrown away in the United States each year to circle the Earth four times.
Sources
Continue reading here: What is Recycling?
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