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The average person creates almost five pounds of trash per day, and in 2018, American consumers created 146.2 million tons of trash that ended up in landfills!?

Recycling helps save energy. If you recycle one glass bottle, it saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours, power a computer for 30 minutes, or a television for 20 minutes!

Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 55-inch HDTV to watch your favorite movie. If we recycled all of the aluminum cans in the U.S., the energy saved could power 4.1 million homes for a full year!

The United States annually recycles enough iron and steel scrap metals (known as ferrous scrap), by weight, to build more than 900 Golden Gate Bridges! A bridge stretching nearly 9,000 feet.

New Yorkers in particular generate over 40,000 tons of waste per day. More than 2,500 garbage trucks and 7,000 sanitation employees brave our neighborhood streets to collect the trash that is largely tossed away haphazardly. Garbage collected by the fleet of trucks and sanitation workers find its way to various landfills outside of the city and even to other states!

More than 52 million tons of paper products were recycled in 2018. That’s roughly the same weight as almost 350,000 blue whales!

What happens to recycled plastic containers? They can be used to make new plastic containers, but it doesn’t stop there. Recycled plastic can also be used in creating other things like cell phone cases, playground equipment, clothes, and even rugs!

Recycling helps our planet and our economy. If all 37.4 million tons of recyclable materials from households were recycled each year, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to removing 20 million cars from U.S. highways and support the creation of 370,000 jobs!

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis used 900 tons of stainless steel in construction. Thats more stainless steel than any project in history at the time it was built! In the U.S., enough stainless steel is recycled each year to build nearly 1,500 Gateway Arches!

Recycling can make one person’s trash another person’s treasure! One metric ton of electronic scrap from personal computers contains more gold than that recovered from 17 tons of gold ore!