Recycling Facts

• The UK uses a forest the size of Wales every year in paper.
• Last year the amount of cans recycled by Rhondda Cynon Taf, when placed end to end, would stretch from Pontypridd to Edinburgh.
• We recycled enough paper to save 34,700 trees; this is equivalent to a forest the size of 35 football pitches.
• Rhondda Cynon Taf recycled 750 tonnes of glass last year; this would make enough bottles to contain 2.7 million pints of milk.
• Each UK household produces over 1 tonne of rubbish annually, amounting to about 31 million tonnes for the UK each year.
• Every year, the average dustbin contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3500 showers or 5,000 hours of television.
• On average every person in the UK throws away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks.
• Every year the UK produces enough waste to fill the Millennium Stadium twice a day every day of the year.
• In less than 2 hours the UK produces enough waste to fill the Albert Hall.
  
• The largest glass furnaces produce more than 400 tonnes - that's more than one million bottles and jars - each day!
• Glass can be recycled again and again without losing its clarity or purity source.
• Milk bottles are reused an average of 13 times before recycling.
• The energy saving from recycling one bottle will:
  • Power a 100 watt light bulb for almost an hour
  • Power a computer for 25 minutes
  • Power a colour TV for 20 minutes
  • Power a washing machine for 10 minutes
• On average every person in the UK gets through 38kg of newspapers a year.
• We use 12.5 million tonnes of paper and cardboard every year in the UK.
• Over Christmas as much as 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper will end up in UK rubbish bins, enough to cover an area larger than Guernsey.
• If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 14 million fewer full dustbins per year.
• Every steel can is 100% recyclable. It can be recycled over and over again into products like bicycles and of course new cans.
• Plastic bags and other plastic rubbish thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
• Since 1950, we have consumed as much as all the generations before us combined.
• To create just 1 kilogram of consumer goods, manufacturers create 5 kilograms of waste.
• Plastics can take up to 400 years to break down in a landfill.
  
• 56% of recycled PET finds a market in the manufacture of carpet and clothing.
• 29% of recycled HDPE bottles go into making new bottles. 
• It takes 5 PET bottles to make 1 square foot of polyester carpet, an extra large t-shirt or filling for a ski jacket. It takes 2 plastic soft drink bottles to make enough polyester fibre for a baseball cap.
• Most families throw away about 40 kg plastic a year.
• There are about 1,000 milk jugs and other bottles in a recycled plastic park bench. Oil which is a non-renewable resource is in all plastic items.
• The aluminium drink can is the world's most recycled packaging container - worldwide over 50% of aluminium cans are recycled.Nearly 60% of the aluminium used in the UK has been previously recycled.
• Making one aluminium drink can from raw materials uses the same amount of energy that it takes to recycle 20.
• The energy saved by recycling 1 aluminium drink can is enough to run a television for three hours.
• If all the aluminium drinks cans recycled in the UK last year were laid end to end, they would stretch from John O'Groats to Land's End 140 times.
• There are over 2.5 billion cans recycled in the UK each year, that's a saving of 125,000 tonnes of solid waste every year.
• Stretched end to end, these recycled cans would stretch three quarters of the way round the Earth.
• All steel cans can be recycled.
• All steel cans contain around 25% recycled steel