Another blog in honor of America Recycles Day on November 15th…  This one is written by our lovely intern, Cristina…

Nowadays, recycling has become second nature to most of us (I mean, you’re reading green tips by an eco-friendly home goods store in Brooklyn).  So, here are some statistics for what recycling programs have done, which will hopefully inspire you to encourage the people around you to recycle too.

Manufacturing using recycled materials often takes less energy that it would take to manufacture using the original raw materials:

• Aluminum from recycled materials saves 95% of the energy used to make it from raw materials
• Steel from recycled steel saves 60% of the energy
• Newspapers from recycled paper save 40%
• Plastics from recycled plastic save 70%
• Glass from recycled glass saves 40%

If that energy were to be used for households, so much would be gained:

• A ton of paper manufactured from recycled paper can save about 4,000 kilowatt hours of energy.
• One glass bottle or jar manufactured from recycled glass saves enough energy to power a 100 watt light bulb for four hours.
• One pound of steel manufactured from recycled steel can power a 60-watt light bulb for over a day.
• One year of aluminum production from recycled aluminum saves enough energy to power 18 million households for a year.

Recycling has a very positive effect on the environment:

• Producing cars from recycled aluminum decreases air pollution by 95 percent.
• Producing recycled paper produces 74% less air pollution, 35% less water pollution & uses 64% less energy than making paper from logs.
• A ton of paper made from recycled materials can save a total of over 500 pounds of air pollution.
• A ton of paper made from recycled paper saves 17 trees.
• Recycling all newspapers read in the United States each morning could save 41,000 trees a day.  Recycling these newspapers would also reduce 6 million tons of waste in the landfills.
• Junk mail accounts for the use of 1.5 trees per person per year.  We could save about 75,000 trees for every 50,000 people who stop their junk mail.

Make a difference! Make the world cleaner, safer, sustainable, and good smelling :).

Written by Cristina Valentin