Recycling 101

American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.

A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.