Do Something

11 Facts about Recycling

1. The average American uses 650 pounds of paper each year – 100 million tons of wood could be saved each year if all that paper was recycled.

2. Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

3. A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers that can all be recycled!

4. About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is only 28%.

5. Every month Americans throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper (think: Empire State Building), but all of these jars are recyclable!

6. Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures a year! Ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It's twice the size of Texas and is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. It's also 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons.

7. Recycling one ton (about 2,000 pounds) of paper saves 17 trees, two barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for six months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of pollution.

8. The 17 trees saved by recycling one ton of paper can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air each year.

9. If all of our newspapers were recycled, we could save about 250 million trees each year! If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we could save about 25 million trees each year.

10. More than 20 million Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. Believe it not, ALL that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it so most it goes in the trash!

11. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours. In spite of this, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every three months!

Easy Ideas

• Find out how large (or small!) your carbon footprint is here! (I was surprised at mine)
• Play an online game that supports DoSomething.org
• Having an event? A dance, a party, a get together? Provide a container for recyclables and others for trash.
• Organize a clothes exchange - get friends and people in your community to bring anything they don't want so they can swap!
• Take your own cloth or canvas bag when you go shopping for groceries, clothes, whatever!
• Use eco-friendly dishes - like bowls made of recycled magazines or glassware instead of paper plates.
• Send an e-blast to family and friends with information and tips on recycling.
• Start reusing a reusable water bottle and just say no to plastic.
• Make sure your printer paper is 100% post-consumer recycled paper.
• Pick up the trash around your town- just because other people don't doesn't mean you shouldn't!
• Try a reusable water bottle- they're easy to wash, and can be used for both hot and cold liquids.
• Get your school to use washable trays if they use paper plates or wrappers
• Use biodegradable sunscreen- and protect yourself from harmful rays every day.
• Reuse boxes for gifts and wrap them with newspaper - use the Sunday comics for pizzazz.\
• Donate! Anything in good condition that you longer need!
• Use Evite or facebook for party and event invitations - it saves paper AND you can know who's coming in an instant!
• Revamp your old clothes! Spice up a shirt you never wear with sequins, or make an old pair of jeans into shorts.
• Use old stuff to make art- make a mobile from CDs, or collage from magazines.
• Use eco-friendly dishes- like bowls made of recycled magazines or glassware instead of paper plates.
• Recycle- DUH!
• When you donate to an organization, find out where the money goes and make sure the organization supports your values.
• Use cloth napkins and dish towels instead of paper ones.
• Reuse bags and containers.

From DoSomeThing.org

I am not big on recyling although I should be. In my house our vice is pizza and since the pizza boxes are too big to fit in the trash I put them off to the side. We try not to splurg too often but thanks to a husband with a good appitate and a 10yr old daughter it doesnt take long for them to stack up!!!
I thought I was doing good by setting the boxes to the side to put in the recycle bin at the dump but after I read this article (click here) I realized I was wrong!!
Guess I'll have to find other ways to make a difference and I hope you do too!!!!



P.S
oh! So I also decided to only use two or three little squares of toilet paper instead of my normal 5 or 6. I know that doesnt seem like a lot but im sure it adds up to me flushing a ton of paper down the drain!! (lol) This is a sacrafice i will just have to live with so that i may save the world one toilet tissue square at a time!!