Recycling Facts

Plastics

• Americans throw away enough plastic bottles each year to circle the earth four times.
• Every hour, we throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles (22 billion plastic bottles per year).
• Five recycled plastic bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket.

Paper

• Recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees.
• Every Sunday, the U.S. wastes nearly 90% of all the recyclable newspapers. This wastes about 500 000 trees.
• One tree can filter up to 27 kg of pollutants from the air each year.
• Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper per year, or 260 kg per person.
• More than 1/3 of all paper fibre used to make paper comes from recycled paper.