EcoMinutes
January 2009 – Recycling
EcoMinutes
January
2009 – Recycling
010509
Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, which is enough to
run the average car for 7,600 miles, 4,000 kilowatts of energy – the amount of
energy used by the average home in 6 months, 6 cubic yards of landfill space,
and 7,000 gallons of water. This represents a
64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less air pollution!
010609
Recycled materials are used to create new products. To maintain recycling
programs, people need to purchase items made of recycled material. By
purchasing recycled products, you are “closing the loop”. Not only do you
save energy and resources, but you also promote a new market. Check
products to see if they are made and packaged with recycled material. The
number and availability of recycled products has increased. In 1990, the
Recycled Products Guide listed 170 items; by 2004, more than 5,000 recycled
content products were available.
010709
Recycling saves energy - it takes less energy to make recycled products; for
example, recycling aluminum takes 95% less energy than creating new aluminum
from bauxite ore, recycling steel reduces energy
consumption by 60 percent, making plastic from existing plastic rather than
petroleum reduces energy needed by 70 percent, and recycling paper saves 64%.
010809
Recycling saves money and creates jobs - the recycling process creates far more
jobs, 6 times as many, than landfills or incinerators, and recycling can
frequently be the least expensive waste management method for cities and towns.
On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50
to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.
010909
About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is
just 32%. Although aluminum cans are the most recycled at 45%, Americans
throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes
every 3 months. Only 13 percent of water bottles are recycled. In 2005,
Americans purchased 30 billion water bottles, and 26 billion of them wound up in
landfills. Less than half of all post-consumer paper discarded in the
United States is recovered for recycling.
011209
Recycling saves natural resources, and helps clean the air and water - by making
products from recycled materials instead of virgin materials, we conserve land
and reduce the need to drill for oil and dig for minerals; and making products
from recycled materials creates less air pollution and water pollution than
making products from virgin materials.
011309
The U.S. currently recycles just over 30 percent of its waste, compared with
about five percent in 1970. At the present time, 13% of plastic water
bottles, about 20 percent of plastic soft drink bottles and milk bottles, 45
percent of aluminum cans and 67 percent of all major appliances are now
recycled. Before 1973, no curbside recycling programs existed in the United
States. By 2006, almost 8,700 curbside programs were operating across the
nation.
011409
Producing one ton of new glass creates 385 lbs of waste and 28 pounds of air
pollution, while recycling glass produces 80% less waste, 20% less air pollution
and 50% less water pollution. The energy saved from recycling just one glass
bottle could run a 100 watt light bulb for 4 hours. In addition glass can
be recycled indefinitely. It takes as little as 30 days for glass sent to
a recycling facility to end up back on store shelves.
Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and
jars to fill up a giant skyscraper, all of these are recyclable!
011509
Americans use 85 million tons of paper a year, about 680 pounds per person.
The average household throws away 13,000 separate
pieces of paper each year, most of that is packaging and junk mail.
If we recycled all of the newspapers printed in the U.S. on a typical Sunday, we
would save 550,000 trees--or about 26 million trees per year. Recycling
just one run of the Sunday New York Times would
save 75,000 trees. Each of these trees can, on average, absorb 15 pounds
of carbon dioxide from the air each year. In order to harvest these trees,
there are more roads in our National Forests than the entire U.S.
Interstate Highway system.
011609
The US is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,600 pounds per person
per year. Recycling much of that trash saves landfill space, slows
loss of animal habitat, and decreases pollution - when materials are recycled
and become new products, they don't go into landfills or incinerators, so
landfill space is conserved, fewer landfills need to be sited, and less
pollution is emitted by incinerators. According to the EPA, recycling cuts
global warming pollution by the equivalent of removing 39.6 million passenger
cars from the road.
011909
More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product, and we use more
than 80 million soda cans per year. Aluminum cans are the most recycled
item in the US, although other aluminum items, such as siding, car components,
or lawn furniture can also be recycled. Every day more than 20 million
Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil.
Although most people don’t realize it, all of that foil is recyclable.
Because so many aluminum cans are recycled, they account for less than 1% of the
total US waste stream, according to the EPA.
012009
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough electricity to light a 100-watt bulb for
3.5 hours, the equivalent of saving ˝ gallon of gasoline. Using recycled
aluminum saves 80% of the total energy consumed when aluminum is produced from
scratch and there is no limit to the number of times aluminum can be recycled.
It takes as little as 60 days for an aluminum can to end up back on store
shelves as a new can. However, an aluminum can in a landfill will take
more than 500 years to decompose.
012109
Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Oil can be recycled,
re-refined, and used again and again, reducing the need to drill for oil and
reducing our dependence on imported oil. A single quart of motor oil, if
disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2 million gallons of fresh water.
You can recycle used motor oil at the Citizens’ Convenience Center at the
Perdido landfill for free, up to 5 gallons per residence, and also at many local
service stations.
012209
The average American uses seven trees per year in paper, wood, and other
products made from trees. Each of these trees
can, on average, absorb 15 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year.
Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.
If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 1,000 sheet virgin
fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save: 373,000 trees,
nearly 1-1/2 million cubic feet of landfill space, and 155 million gallons of
water.
012309
Plastic is our least recycled resource. Americans use 2,500,000 plastic
bottles every hour, most of them are thrown away. Americans throw away 25
million Styrofoam coffee cups every year. The
average American household uses approximately 900 plastic bags per year - adding
up to a whopping 100 billion plastic shopping bags used in households across the
country annually and equals 12 million barrels of oil wasted. Plastic bags
and other plastic garbage thrown in the oceans kill as many as one million sea
creatures every year. Cities estimate the costs of plastic bag cleanup to
be millions of dollars annually.
012609
It’s easy to get curbside recycling in Escambia County. The easiest way to
sign up for the new recycling program is by E-mailing the ECUA at
support@ecua.org . Please include your name,
address and daytime phone number, along with the desired recycling container
size. Available sizes are 40-gallon, 64-gallon, or 90-gallon containers.
Or, you can download the sign-up form
located on the Sanitation Services page and fax it to 494-7343, or mail
it to the ECUA, at the address on the webpage. If
you have no internet access, or have questions, you can call 850-476-0480.
012709
Do something good for the earth today, sign up for the ECUA’s new recycling
program. The ECUA now picks up trash, recyclables and yard waste on the
same day. To find out which is your pick up day, go to ECUA.org and scroll
down to the “Find
Out Your Sanitation Collection Day “link. Follow this link
to the Route Looker-Upper™, type in your
street address and hit “Get Route”. Then, hit your address link and the
information for all three of your pick-ups will be listed.
012809
Here’s what you can recycle in the new ECUA recycling program:
Newspaper & Inserts•Magazines
& Catalogs •Junk
Mail & Envelopes•Cardboard•Office
and School Papers (colored paper)•Boxboard
(cereal, cake & cracker boxes)•Brown
Paper Bags (grocery)•Aluminum
Cans•Tin and
Steel Cans•Plastic
Milk Jugs•Plastic
Bottles (with necks only)•Phone
Books. Basically, if an item has the recycling symbol on it (except for
polystyrene foam products or glass), and it is free of food residue, include it
as a recyclable item and put it in your recycling container.
012909
Here’s what you cannot
recycle in the new ECUA recycling program: Plastic
Bags•Food-Tainted
Items•Ice
Cream Cartons•polystyrene foam products (disposable coffee cups, coolers or packaging
materials)•Pizza
Boxes•Waxy/Paper
Milk Cartons•
Aluminum Foil•Plastic Cups & Silverware•Aerosol
Cans•Other
Plastics (hangers, food trays, etc.)•Juice
Boxes / Bags•Garbage
or Yard Waste Material or Glass* which cannot be accepted for recycling at this
time because broken glass contaminates the other recyclables and decreases
market value. Glass items are still accepted at County drop-off centers.
013009
Have you called for a recycling bin but haven’t gotten it yet?
With over 75,000 households, and
many requests coming in this week, our crews and can-delivery contractor are
working overtime to fulfill as many requests as possible daily. We are
delivering an average of 600 cans each day, seven-days-a-week, to customers all
over our service area. That said, please expect it to take 30 days or so
for delivery of your can. Cans must be assembled and the can’s serial
number must be entered into our computer system under your account. We have
additional overtime staff working on these tasks to expedite the process as
quickly as possible.