The average American generates a lifetime of 90,000 pounds of trash and babies produce a ton of garbage annually. Recycling just 10% more materials could save enough energy to heat 1.5 million homes or provide electricity to 1.8 million Americans for a year. If every household recycled one bottle out of every ten used, 200 million pounds of plastic waste could be kept out of landfills each year. Plastic bottles take 700 years to decompose in landfills and Americans drink 167 water bottles each but only recycle 23% on average, leaving 38 billion bottles in U.S. landfills annually.

2. * In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his/her adult weight in garbage. If you add it up, this means that a 150-lb. adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs of trash for his/her children. *The average baby generates a ton of garbage every year. *The landfill gas produced daily at Fresh Kills Landfill is enough fuel to heat 50,000 homes. Source: http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html

3. Recycling saves energy and reduces greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. If the recycling rate for aluminum and steel cans, plastic PET and glass containers, newsprint and corrugated packaging were to increase a mere 10%, an additional 3.9 million tons of materials would be recycled, saving enough energy to: Heat 1.5 million American homes in a moderate climate for one year. Provide the required electricity to 1.8 million Americans for one year. Save Americans about $957 million in avoided costs for barrels of crude oil. Source: http://www.nrc-recycle.org/1itsworking.aspx

4. *If every American household recycled just one out of every ten bottles they used, we’d keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year. If everyone in NYC gave up water bottles for one week, they would save 24 million bottles from being landfilled. One month on the same plan would save 112 million bottles, and one year would save 1.328 billion bottles from going into the landfill. Plastic bottles take 700 years before they begin to decompose in a landfill. In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills. Source: http://earth911.com/plastic/plastic-bottle-recycling-facts/ and http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html

6. In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills. If everyone in NYC gave up water bottles for one week, they would save 24 million bottles from being landfilled. One month on the same plan would save 112 million bottles, and one year would save 1.328 billion bottles from going into the landfill. Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year. Small plastic bags made up about nine percent of the debris found along various U.S. coasts in a five-year study.