Recycling facts

* Americans use an average of 741 pounds of paper, per person, each year.

* Most of the world's paper supply comes from timber logged in regions with ecologically valuable, biologically diverse habitat.

* The virgin timber-based pulp and paper industry is the third greatest industrial emitter of global warming pollution. Its carbon dioxide emissions are projected to double by 2020.

http://www.nrdc.org/cities/living/paper/default.asp 


Americans buy over 29 million bottles of water every year. Making all those bottles uses 17 million barrels of crude oil annually, which would be enough fuel to keep 1 million cars on the road for one year. Only 13% of those bottles are recycled. Plastic bottles take centuries to decompose—and if they are burned, they release toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals.

What Are The Reasons Why I Should Recycle?

Reducing, reusing and recycling is important for many reasons.
For starters, reusable items save us money. Constantly replacing disposbale items costs money, not because of buying new things, but because many of those things are pricey to begin with.
Eliminating waste usually leads to an elimination of harmful chemicals as well, such off-gasing and unsafe resources. This is because disposable items are newly manufactured, meaning constant off-gasing; many are made from plastics, which contain harmful chemicals such as BPA; and others are processed in a way that includes dangerous chemicals, such as the bleaching of paper napkins or plates.

Then there are the environmental issues behind constant waste:
• This first is manufacturing. Constantly reproducing new products means excessive use of water, oil and other chemicals. This also often leads to pollution around manufacturing plants, which affects the environment, as well as human health in the area.
• The second is the constant shipping of new products. This amounts of hundreds of thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide in the environment. This affects plants, animals and people in the environment.
• The third would be a loss of resources. Most products that are disposable still use an abundance of resources...resources that may be limited in the future, or even now, such as oil and water.
• Fourth, is litter. Most litter and dumped waste found on the road or in wild areas is from disposable products.
• And last, is our long-term waste management. Designating landfills is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. And because things put in a landfill don't decompose, those items will never return back to a reusable form by man or Nature.
And a highly disposable culture simply isn't sustainable - meaning we can't sustain this level of use and waste for the long-term.

http://www.sustainablebabysteps.com/reduce-reuse-recycle.html