The Green Routine

Recycling is a process shrouded in mystery. The average consumer’s experience with recycling is limited to dragging a recycling bin to the curb, or bringing assorted cans and bottles back to the store to collect deposits. While searching for information on how various recycling processes work, I noticed each of the websites had their only little interesting factoids or quips about their niche of recycling.

Image courtesy of kingdesmond

I decided to put together this list of the 20 or so most interesting recycling facts I found during my search.

General Recycling Facts

Iron and steel are the world’s most recycled materials

Asphalt is the most recycled material in the US topping the charts. 80% of asphalt is recycled.

According to the EPA, the US recycles 32.5% of its trash yearly.

Austria recycles more of its waste than any other country in Europe, and as far as I can tell the world according to the BBC.

Plastics

The most commonly recycled plastic is PET denoted by plastic identification code #1. PET bottles begin life as soda or liquor bottles.

Plastic marked with the numbers 3, 4, 5 and 7 often gets thrown into a landfill by government recycling programs - it’s too difficult and expensive to recycle.

Plastic bags and film are recycled into composite lumber, an imitation wood made from plastic. In 2006, enough plastic bags were recycled to build 1.5 million composite lumber decks.

Less than 3% of plastic bags are recycled.

It costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32. As reported by The Christian Science Monitor.

Aluminum

There is no limit to the number of times aluminum can be recycled.

Aluminum is the most valuable material in the average recycling bin.

According to The University of Tennessee Recycling one ton of aluminum cans saves 37 barrels of oil.

It takes 95% less energy to recycle a can than to make that same can from virgin aluminum.

Recycled aluminum cans are often back on the shelf as new aluminum cans in just 6 weeks.

Shredded aluminum cans are more valuable on the recycling market than whole cans. Presumably, because they take up less space.

If you recycled all the aluminum cans the average person consumed in their lifetime it could power a TV for 130,000 hours or in other words 14 years.

Paper

Recycling paper uses 60 percent less energy than manufacturing paper from raw materials, and saves tons of trees.

Sunday newspapers across the US are responsible for the loss of 500,000 trees each week. That’s 500,000 good reasons to read your news online.

Worldwide 50% of recycled paper is created from pre-consumer waste such as unsold magazines, books and newspapers;  only about 33% comes from household or “post-consumer” waste.

Glass

Glass can be reused an infinite amount of times. It’s the one material you don’t NEED to recycle.

Recycling glass generates 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than creating new glass.

The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.

If you enjoyed these interesting recycling facts, and would like to read more - I highly suggest checking out Totallyrandom Weblog Fun Facts Part 2 and Fun Facts Part 3. As I was scouring the web to build this compilation, their lists really stood out as worthwhile reading.