Why Recycle?

a KOB truck  Recycling helps clean our environment as well as saves energy and valuable natural resources. Another major reason we need to recycle is because we are running out of landfills. To build a landfill, a huge hole is dug and then lined with clay or huge sheets of plastic. When a landfill is full of trash, layers of soil and clay seal it inside. The trash in landfills last a long time. Some landfill excavations have discovered 35-year old newspapers you can still read! Even after 20 years, one-third to one-half of even organic waste, such as food waste and grass clippings, are still intact. Eliminating items that end up in the landfill is the key to preserving our environment.

The following statistics are helpful in deciding to make the choice to recycle:

  • Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees, 2 barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for 6 months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of air pollution.
  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months.
  • About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is just 28%.
  • Over half a million trees are saved each year by recycling paper.
  • There are more roads in our National Forests than the entire U.S. Interstate Highway system.
  • Recycling creates 6 times as many jobs as landfill jobs.

More Interesting Facts:

  • Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to operate a TV for 3 hours.
  • If we recycled all of the newspapers printed in the U.S. on a typical Sunday, we would save 550,000 trees--or about 26 million trees per year.
  • The energy saved each year by steel recycling is equal to the electrical power used by 18 million homes each year - or enough energy to last large cities like Los Angeles for eight years.
  • If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 1,000 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save: 373,000 trees, 1.48 million cubic feet of landfill space, and 155 million gallons of water.
  • The U.S. is 5% of the world's population but uses 25% of its natural resources.
  • Want more Eco-Facts? Visit the Environmental Protection Agency.