Trash & Recycling Facts

You can help the planet by recycling your trash.

It is important to learn the facts about our domestic waste, so we know just what it is we're doing to our planet when we're partaking in the old chore of taking out the trash. As our society becomes more environmentally friendly, however, recycling, which is the process of reusing old materials, is speedily becoming the way forward, and consequently reducing waste build-up across the land.

Trash Decomposition

When you throw away your trash, that's not the end of the road. Your waste remains on the planet for a long time, even once it has vacated your trash can. A banana skin can take approximately 10 days to fully decompose. Sugar cane can take up to 60 days. Cotton can take five months to decompose, as can paper bags. Orange peel takes six months. Rope can take up to 14 months, while a cigarette butt can take up to 12 years to fully decompose. Leather shoes and nylon clothing can take up to 40 years to decompose, disposable diapers can take 500 years, and some plastic bags can take 1,000 years to decompose. A glass bottle can take an incredible one million years to decompose.

Paper

500,000 trees are cut down in order to produce America's Sunday newspapers each week.

The average American makes use of seven trees a year through paper and wood products. In order to produce the Sunday newspapers every week in the United States, 500,000 trees must be cut down. Yet if a single run of the Sunday New York Times was recycled, 75,000 trees could be saved. Still, an average American household throws away approximately 13,000 pieces of scrap paper a year, the majority of which is junk mail or packaging. In total, Americans use 85 million tons of paper each year. That is approximately 680 pounds per person.

Plastic

Plastic, like paper, is another material used a great deal. It is often recyclable, but a lot of the time plastic is dumped in a reckless manner and left to cause damage to the planet. Plastic that lands in the ocean, for example, kills approximately one million sea creatures each year. Americans use more than two million plastic bottles every hour. Practically all of these can be recycled, yet 75 percent are thrown away incorrectly and left to decompose in landfills. This decomposition can take up to 1,000 years.

Aluminium

Aluminium cans remain the most often recycled item in America.

Americans go through an average of 80 million aluminium cans a year. It takes just 60 days for a used aluminium beverage can to be recycled and put back on the shelf for re-use as a new can. Recycling an aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television set for three hours. However, while aluminium beverage cans remain the item that most often is recycled in America, there are other aluminium recyclable products often forgotten about, such as lawn furniture and car components.

Glass

Glass can be recycled.

Glass can be recycled over and over. The majority of glass bottles and jars we use are, in fact, already made up of 25 percent recycled glass. Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to run a 100 watt light bulb for four hours, or a compact fluorescent bulb for 20. Still, every two weeks, Americans throw away enough glass bottles to fill the former World Trade Centers. All of this glass is recyclable.

References

• Socyberty : Strange Trash Facts
• A Recycling Revolution : Recycling Facts
• Oberlin College Resource Conservation Team : Recycling Facts