November 15: America Recycles Day

Americans generate almost twice the amount of trash of other developed countries – a monstrous four pounds of garbage everyday. Think about the enormity of this: There are 301,139,947 residents of the United States. That’s 1,204,559,788 pounds or 602,280 tons of trash every single day. Now multiply that by a year… Get the picture?

And that’s not even the worst of it! This country currently has about 3,000 active landfills. The trash we create and then forget about is taken to one of these massive landfills. That garbage contaminates drinking water, emits methane (a greenhouse gas that is 26 times more powerful than carbon dioxide), and disgusting odors.

Sadly, 75% of all that trash is recyclable… and only 25% actually gets recycled. Consider this:

• If every household reused a paper grocery bag for one shopping trip, about 60,000 trees would be saved.
• Every ton of recycled office paper saves 380 gallons of oil.
• By recycling one aluminum can, enough energy is saved to run a TV set for three hours.
• Americans throw out enough iron and steel to supply all the nation’s automakers on a continuous basis.
• If every American household recycled just one out of every ten plastic bottles they used, we’d keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year.
• There are an estimated 150 million cell phones sitting unused in homes and offices across the country waiting to be recycled or reused. Recycling just 1 million cell phones saves enough energy to power over 1,940 U.S. households with electricity for one year.

The spirit of “America Recycles” is to encourage everyone to recycle every day, not just on November 15. You can support the effort by promoting this year’s slogan: “It all comes back to you” as the message for your America Recycles campaign.

The slogan says it all. When we recycle and buy products made of recycled material, “it comes back to you.” In a very practical way we can all help to improve our economy and conserve our energy and resources. Even a small shift in your attitudes and actions, multiplied many times over by others, can change the world.

Take the America Recycles Day Pledge…

• To buy more recycled content products (like recycled office paper)
• To increase my recycling efforts at home, school and work
• To participate in other recycling-related efforts or community events
  

Do you have questions about recycling? We've created a list of recycling tips to get you started. You'll find info on recycling everything from fabric to aluminum to glass to paper. And there's even more info on our environment page. So now you have no valid excuse not to recycle. Do it for Mother Earth!