Did you Know..........?
This page details a few interesting facts with regards recycable products and landfill statistics.
Carbon Footprint
The average UK household produces 20 tonnes of CO2 a year
Carbon isn't just released in car exhausts and power plants, everyday things as simple as opening a drinks can or even breathing out release CO2.
Greenhouse gasses are given their name because, like a green house, they allow in the suns warm UV rays, but only let some of the ones that are reflecting off the Earth to escape back into space.
Glass
Glass is 100% recyclable, It takes less energy to melt recycled glass than to melt raw materials, so recycling saves natural resources and energy.
In the UK, we use over 6 billion glass containers each year. That means it would take 3,500 years to sing "6 billion green bottles hanging on a wall"!!
In 2005 we recycled approximately 1.2 million tons of used glass (sometimes known as 'cullet')
The energy saving from recycling one glass bottle will:
- Power a 100 watt light bulb for almost an hour.
- Power a computer for 25 minutes.
- Power a colour TV for 20 minutes.
Plastic
- 150 million plastic carrier bags are used in the UK each week —they can take up to 500 years to decay in landfill.
- Recycled materials can return to the marketplace in as little as 30 days.
- If you lined up all the polystyrene foam cups made in just 1 day they would circle the earth.
- Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
- On a landfill site plastic can take as much as 500 years, possibly more, to decompose.
- 1 recycled plastic bottle would save enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for up to three hours.
Cardboard and Paper
- Every year we need a forest the size of Wales to provide all the paper we use in the UK.
- 17 trees are needed for one tonne of paper, that's about 7000 copies of a national newspaper.
- Paper can be recycled up to 6 times.
- Paper and Cardboard make up 32% of all the rubbish we throw away.
- We use 9 million tonnes of paper and card every year in the UK.
- Over christmas as much as 83 square kilometers of wrapping paper will end up in Uk rubbish bins, enough to cover an area larger than Guernsey.
Metal
- Every year in the UK we get through 13 billion steel cans. If they were placed end to end, they would stretch to the moon and back, three times!!!
- If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 14 million fewer full dustbins per year.
- Producing steel from recycled material saves 75% of the energy needed for steel made from new materials.
- Every steel can is 100% recyclable. It can be recycled over and over again into products like bicycles and, of course, new cans.
- If all of the aluminium cans recycled in the UK in 1998 were laid end to end, they would stretch from Land's End to John O'Groats more than 160 times.
- Recycling aluminium drink cans saves up to 95% of the energy needed to extract and make aluninum from its raw materials
- £36,000,000 worth of aluminum is thrown away each year, mostly in the form of cans.
- 1 recycled tin would save enough energy to power a TV for almost three hours.
- Up to 80% of a vehicle can be recycled, the government are hoping to raise this to 90% by 2020.
Landfill/General Waste
- Every tonne of biodegradable waste produces 300-500 cubic metres of landfill gas.
- Landfill sites released 20% of the UK's methane emissions in 2002.
- Every year, the average dustbin contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3500 showers or 5,000 hours of television. (Yay!!!)
- In less than 2 hours the UK produces enough waste to fill the Albert Hall.
- In just over a week, we produce enough energy to fill Wembley stadium. Over half of that is recycleable.
- 60% of all rubbish that ends up in UK dustbins could be recycled, 50% of household waste could be composted.
Contact Envirotech to discuss how we can increase your recycling.