Paper
Each school student produces about 240 pounds of waste per year or about 1.33 pounds a day in a 180-day school year. Mixed paper is by far the largest component of that waste.
Americans throw away the equivalent of more that 30 million trees in newsprint each year.
If you recycled the New York Times every day for a year, you would prevent 15 pounds of air pollution caused by virgin paper production. If all the buyers and subscribers of that paper recycled it, over 6,000 tons of pollution would be kept out of the air we breathe.
A ton of paper made from 100 percent-recycled paper, instead of virgin paper pulp saves:
 | 17 trees |
| 7,000 gallons of water |
| 60 pounds air pollution |
| 4,100 kilowatt hours of energy |
| 3 cubic yards of landfill space |
| taxpayer dollars used for disposal costs |
Cardboard
Recycling cardboard cuts the emission of sulfur dioxide (part of acid rain) in half.The following materials are required to make just one ton of paper packaging:
| 3,688 pounds of wood |
| 2167 pounds of lime |
| 360 pounds of salt cake |
| 76 pounds of soda ash |
| 24,000 gallons of water |
| 28 million BTUs of energy |
At Christmas time, for example, Americans throw away over 4 million tons of paper packaging!
Aluminum Cans
In terms of energy, throwing away one aluminum can is like dumping 2 gallons of gasoline on the ground.The aluminum can industry can make up to 20 times more cans for the same amount of energy if they use recycled cans rather than raw materials like bauxite ore.
It takes only 90 days to get a "new" recycled aluminum can back on the grocery shelf after it is collected, melted, rolled, manufactured, and distributed to beverage makers.
Enough aluminum cans are thrown away each to year to rebuild the nation's entire commercial airline fleet.