Wacky Waste Tips
Have
you ever thought about how much rubbish you and your family throw
away every week? Or why we need to stop throwing so much of it away?
This page is full of amazing waste facts. Did you know that?
General Garbage
In 2005/06 at least 6.8 million tons of household waste were recycled or composted. This amounts to 27 percent of total household waste. However, it has been estimated that up to 80% of the contents of our dustbins could be recycled or composted.
The United States produces more then 210 million tons of waste every year!
On average, each person throws away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks
42% of our garbage is made up of paper textile.
About three and a half pounds of solid waste are thrown away every day for each person in the U.S.
Trash often contains chemicals such as those found in cleaners, paints, and sprays.
Some types of solid waste cannot be hauled off by packer trucks and goes to a landfill.
No matter how hard we try there is no escaping garbage. Of all the waste we generate, we now recyle about 40%.
In 1999 we threw away about 930,000 pounds of garbage in the USA.
People throw away about 4 pounds of garbage a day per person.
One single person throws away four pounds of garbage a day. Over 2/3 of the food we throw away is edible. We throw more garbage away now than we ever have thrown away.
We create more than 2.02 tons per person per year.
Industrialized countries produce more than half of the world's garbage.
We throw away more than 50 cd's each year in the United States of America.
We throw away more garbage than we ever have.
An average person throws away about four pounds a trash a day.
About half of the trash we throw away is still safe to eat.
Bulging Bottles
It is not known how long glass takes to break down, but it is so long that glass made in the Middle East over 3,000 years ago can still be found today.
Milk bottles are used an average of 13 times before recycling.
In 2003, the recycling of glass saved enough energy to launch ten space shuttle missions!
Fantastic Plastic
We produce and use twenty times more plastic today than we did 50 years ago.
Every year an estimated 17.5 billion plastic bags are given away by supermarkets. This represents over 130,000 tons of plastic - enough to cover an area the size of London twice with a layer of bags.
25 two litre pop bottles can be recycled into an adult-size fleece jacket.
Trashy Tins
We get through 5 billion drinks cans every year. Each one could be recycled back into a new can, saving large amounts of energy, raw materials and waste.
Weight for weight, empty aluminum cans are worth 6 to 20 times more than any other used packaging material. There are more than 30 million pounds worth of empty aluminum drinks cans in the UK just waiting to be collected, cashed in and recycled.
Revolting Rubbish
It has been calculated that, before they are toilet trained, the average child goes through 3,796 nappies, most of which end up buried in landfill sites.