Recycling Trivia

Did you know that...?

• If you recycle just two gallons of used oil, it can generate enough electricity to run an average household for almost 24 hours.
  
  
• Americans throw away enough trash every minute to fill a house.
  
  
• At least 39.9% of the waste stream in the U.S. is paper.
  
  
• Five recycled soda bottles make enough fiberfill for one ski jacket.
  
  
• Every year, we make enough plastic film to shrink wrap Texas.
  
  
• If you stacked the aluminum cans that people sent to the landfills, in just five weeks they would reach the Moon!
  
  
• Since 1991, 12,475,058 phone books have been recycled in the Phoenix area.  That would equal enough old phone books to stretch 2,166 miles when laid end to end...about the same distance between Phoenix and Tampa, FL!  In addition, over 1.5 million trees, 180 million gallons of water, and more than 105 million kilowatt hours of energy have been saved by the recycling of old phone books. (provided by Qwest/Dex, recycling department)
  
  
• Mesa collected more than 34,000 tons of recyclables from the Blue Barrel Program and more than 17,000 tons of green waste from the Green Barrel Program in 2007.  However, Mesa residents still sent more than 121,000 tons of trash to the landfill.

Visit Earth911 to learn more about recycling and other important environmental issues.