In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his or her adult weight in garbage. This means that each adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs. of trash for his or her children.

Recycling all of your home's waste newsprint, cardboard, glass, and metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 850 pounds a year.

Nationally, in 1999, each of us generated on average 4.62 pounds of waste per day per person. 

Enough energy is saved by recycling one aluminum can to run a TV set for three hours or to light one 100 watt bulb for 20 hours.

Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.

Annually, enough energy is saved by recycling steel to supply Los Angeles with electricity for almost 10 years.

You can make 20 cans out of recycled material with the same amount of energy it takes to make one new one.

In this decade, it is projected that Americans will throw away over 1 million tons of aluminum cans and foil, more than 11 million tons of glass bottles and jars, over 4 and a half million tons of office paper and nearly 10 million tons of newspaper. Almost all of this material could be recycled.

Incinerating 10,000 tons of waste creates 1 job, landfilling the same amount creates 6 jobs, recycling the same 10,000 tons creates 36 jobs.

The recycling industry contributes to the economy by employing 1.1 million people with a $37 billion payroll and $236 billion gross annual sales.

American's throw away enough office and writing paper annually to build a wall 12 feet high stretching from Los Angeles to New York City.

Every Sunday, the United States wastes nearly 90% of the recyclable newspapers. This wastes about 500,000 trees!

If everyone in the U.S. recycled just 1/10 of their newsprint, we would save the estimated equivalent of about 25 million trees a year.

One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.

It takes 75,000 trees to print a Sunday Edition of the New York Times.

One ton of recycled paper saves 3,700 pounds of lumber and 24,000 gallons of water.

One ton of recycled paper uses: 64% less energy, 50% less water, 74% less air pollution, saves 17 trees and creates 5 times more jobs than one ton of paper products from virgin wood pulp.

Annually, four million tons of junk mail are delivered in the United States. 

The average adult receives 41 pounds of junk mail annually.