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Interesting Facts
- The United States throws away enough office and writing paper annually to build a 12-foot wall across the country.
- Americans throw away more than 600 pounds of paper products per person per year.
- Paper is recycled into new products such as tar paper, asphalt shingles, cereal boxes, and of course new paper.
Benefits of Recycling Paper:
- Improve Your Organization’s Image: By using fewer resources and reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators, a company may enhance its customer and community image.
- Divert Material from Disposal: Keeping paper out of the waste stream will save landfill space and reduced pollution through avoided incineration.
- Conserve Natural Resources: By substituting old paper to be used in place of trees, recycling reduces the pressure to cut down trees.
- Save Energy: The steps in supplying recycled materials to industry (including collection, processing and transportation) typically use less energy than the steps in supplying virgin materials to industry (including extraction, refinement, transportation, and processing). But, most energy savings associated with recycling accrue in the manufacturing process itself, since recycled materials have already been processed at least once.
- The manufacture of recycled paper requires 7,000 less gallons of water per ton compared to non-recycled paper.
- Energy saved: Each ton of recycled paper produced requires 4,102 kwh less energy than virgin paper.
- Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions: By reducing the amount of energy used by industry, recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions that may lead to global warming. Energy used in the industrial processes and in transportation involves burning fossil fuels like gasoline, diesel and coal.
Recycling one ton of paper saves:
- 17 mature trees
- 3.3 cubic yards (2.5 cubic meters) of landfill space
- 7000 gallons (27,000 liters) of water
- 380 gallons (1440 liters) of oil
- 4100 kilowatt hours (14,700 megajoules) of energy
- 60 pounds (27 kilograms) of pollutants
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