The average American throws away 4 pounds of trash daily. Considering the fact that there are over 300,000,000 people living within the United States it is easy to see how the trash situation can get out of hand. In fact, it’s estimated that the US generates around 230 million tons of trash a year. The good news is that with that much trash there is a lot of room for improvement. Here are some statistics from The Clean Air Council that demonstrate how much room for improvement there really is.
- Only about 1/10 of solid garbage in the U.S. gets recycled.
- Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
- In the U.S., an additional 5 million tons of waste is generated during the holidays. Four million tons of this is wrapping paper and shopping bags.
- Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to rebuild our commercial air fleet every three months.
The good news is that a little recycling can go a long way.
- For every ton of plastic bottles that are recycled, 3.8 barrels of oil are saved.
- Aluminum has a quick turn-around as a recycled material. It can be back on the shelf as a new can in as little as six weeks.
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