20 Fun Facts on Recycling

Fort McMurray has one of the best recycling programs in Alberta, and it's not just because residents recycle their bottles and paper accumulated in their Fort McMurray apartments. The main reasons for Fort Mac's success with sustainability and recycling is their consistent public education and campaigns on proper recycling and numerous anti-litter community pick up days which citizens eagerly participate in. The city fiercely maintains their excellent reputation of being one of the cleanest cities in the World. In tribute to Fort Mac's amazing success with recycling, here are 20 fun, mind-blowing facts that you didn't know about recycling:

#1: Recycling one tin can save enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours #2: One 20-year-old tree makes 785 paper bags #3: Packaging accounts for more than 30% of your garbage #4: For each $11.00 spent on groceries, $1.00 is paying for packaging #5: Recycling one ton of paper saves three cubic yards of landfill space #6: Recycling aluminum reduces energy use by 95% with similar reductions in water and air pollution #7: The average person generates over 4 pounds of trash every day and about 1.5 tons of solid waste per year. #8: In 2009, Americans produced enough trash to circle the Earth 24 times. #9: Over 75% of waste is recyclable, but we only recycle about 30% of it. #10: We generate 21.5 million tons of food waste each year. If we composted that food, it would reduce the same amount of greenhouse gas as taking 2 million cars off the road. #11: Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to listen to a full album on your iPod. Recycling 100 cans could light your bedroom for two whole weeks. #12: Recycling aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy used to make alum cans from new material. #13: Americans throw away 25,000,000 plastic bottles every hour. #14: Over 87% of Americans have access to curbside or drop-off paper recycling programs. #15: In 2009, Americans threw away almost 9 million tons of glass. That could fill enough tractor trailers to stretch from NYC to LA (and back!). #16: In 2010, paper recycling had increased over 89% since 1990. #17: If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we could save about 25 million trees each year. #18: 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. #19: The process of recycling paper instead of making it from new materials generates 74 percent less air pollution and uses 50 percent less water. #20: 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.

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