Enfield Recycles!

Source: Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority (CRRA) http://www.crra.org/pages/recy_statistics.htm

RECYCLING FACTS - Aluminum

• The aluminum can is 100 percent recyclable and can be used to make new beverage cans indefinitely.
• Aluminum cans are the most valuable item in your bin. It’s the only packaging material that more than covers the cost of collection and re-processing for itself.
• Recycled aluminum saves 95 percent energy compared to the production of virgin aluminum
• Recycling of one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours.
• Four pounds of bauxite are saved for every pound of aluminum recycled.
• Enough aluminum is thrown away to rebuild our commercial air fleet four times every year.
• Throwing away a single aluminum can, rather than recycling it, is like pouring out six ounces of gasoline.
• Last year, Americans recycled enough aluminum cans to conserve the energy equivalent of more than 15 million barrels of oil.

RECYCLING FACTS - Electronics

• Electronic waste is growing two to three times faster than any other waste stream (i.e. paper, yard waste).
• Americans will scrap about 400 million units of consumer electronics each year in this decade.
• Between 2000 and 2007, as many as 500 million personal computers became obsolete and enter the municipal solid waste stream.
• There is a large volume of cell phones retired each year, likely up to 130 million per year.
• Yearly, on a national basis, over 100 million pounds of materials are recovered from electronics, including steel, glass and plastic, as well as precious metals.
• Since CRRA began electronics recycling programs in 1999, more than 2.6 million pounds of electronics have been kept from being processed in trash-to-energy plants.
• In the spring of 2006 alone, CRRA collected nearly 320,000 pounds of recycled electronics.
• Only nine percent of the more than two million tons of consumer electronics thrown out in 2000 in the United States were recycled, despite the fact that personal computers, mainframe computers, monitors, telecommunications equipment, and consumer electronics such as televisions contain a wide variety of recoverable materials.
• Electronics recycling companies started emerging in the recycling market in the 1990s. The top 10 firms process 75 percent of the electronics recycled in this country.

RECYCLING FACTS - Glass

• Recycled glass saves 5 percent energy compared to the production of virgin glass
• Recycling of one glass container saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours.
• Recycled glass generates 20 percent less air pollution and 50 percent less water pollution.
• One ton of glass made from 50 percent recycled materials saves 250 pounds of mining waste.
• Glass can be reused an infinite number of times; over 41 billion glass containers are made each year.

RECYCLING FACTS - Paper

• Recycled paper saves 60 percent energy compared to the production of virgin paper.
• Recycling of each ton of paper saves 17 trees and 7000 gallons of water.
• Every year enough paper is thrown away to make a 12-foot wall from New York to California.
• Global paper use has grown more than six-fold since 1950.
• One fifth of all wood harvested in the world ends up in paper.
• It takes two to three and a half tons of trees to make one ton of paper.
• Pulp and paper production is the fifth largest industrial consumer of energy in the world, using as much power to produce a ton of product as the iron and steel industry.
• In some countries, including the United States, paper accounts for nearly 40 percent of all municipal solid waste.
• Making paper uses more water per ton than any other product in the world.
• If offices throughout the country increased the rate of two-sided photocopying from the 1991 figure of 20 percent to 60 percent, they could save the equivalent of about 15 million trees.
• Every Sunday 500,000 trees could be saved if everyone recycled their newspapers.
• More than 100 million trees’ worth of bulk mail arrives in American mail boxes each year – that’s the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months.
• In 2003, 5.4 million tons of catalogs and other direct mailings ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream – enough to fill over 420,000 garbage trucks. Parked bumper to bumper these garbage trucks would extend from Atlanta to Albuquerque. Only 32 percent of this ad mail was recycled.
• The production and disposal of junk mail consumes more energy than 2.8 million cars.
• One study says Americans throw away 44 percent of bulk mail unopened, yet still spend eight months per lifetime opening bulk mail.

RECYCLING FACTS - Plastic

• Plastic milk containers are now only half the weight that they were in 1960.
• If we recycled every plastic bottle we used, we would keep two billion tons of plastic out of the trash.
• Recycling a pound of PET saves approximately 12,000 BTU's.
• We use enough plastic wrap to wrap all of Texas every year.