School Energy and Recycling Team
SERT
Recycling Fun Facts
Every Sunday, the United States wastes nearly 90% of the recyclable newspapers. This wastes about 500,000 trees! Everyday Americans buy 62 million newspapers and throw out 44 million. That's the equivalent of dumping 500,000 trees into a landfill every week. Americans throw away enough office and writing paper annually to build a wall 12 feet high stretching from Los Angeles to New York City. If everyone in the U.S. recycled just 1/10 of their newsprint, we would save the estimated equivalent of about 25 million trees a year. One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year. It takes 75,000 trees to print a Sunday Edition of the New York Times. One ton of recycled paper saves 3,700 pounds of lumber and 24,000 gallons of water. One ton of recycled paper uses: 64% less energy, 50% less water, 74% less air pollution, saves 17 trees and creates 5 times more jobs than one ton of paper products from virgin wood pulp. In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his or her adult weight in garbage. This means that each adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs. of trash for his or her children. Recycling all of your paper, newsprint, cardboard, glass, and metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 850 pounds per household per year. Each of us generates on average 4.4 pounds of waste per day per person. Enough energy is saved by recycling one aluminum can to run a TV set for three hours or to light one 100 watt bulb for 20 hours.
Its your worldchoose to conserve
School Energy and Recycling Team
SERT
Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet. Annually, enough energy is saved by recycling steel to supply Los Angeles with electricity for almost 10 years. It takes as much energy to make a single new can as it does to recycle twenty used cans. Five recycled plastic bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket. In this decade, it is projected that Americans will throw away over 1 million tons of aluminum cans and foil, more than 11 million tons of glass bottles and jars, over 4 and a half million tons of office paper and nearly 10 million tons of newspaper. Almost all of this material could be recycled. Incinerating 10,000 tons of waste creates 1 job, landfilling the same amount creates 6 jobs, recycling the same 10,000 tons creates 36 jobs. (Facts from:http://www.recyclingit.com/factsbenefits.html)
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/osw/kids/index.htm
"Which bin does it go in?" - conveyor belt speeds up as drop items in correct recycling bin "N. Trubble and the Environauts" - activities educates students about source reduction, reuse, and recycling, describes the importance of resource conservation "Raw Materials Line Up" - detective game - pick out what product in "line-up" is made from raw materials "P.I. in the Sky" - keep P.I. in air hanging on to balloons by matching correct words (picking letters) to clue given "Waste no words" crossword puzzle
http://kid-at-art.com/htdoc/matchtmp.html
Art projects using various types of solid waste
http://www.phila.gov/streets/game_recyling.html http://www.p2pays.org/recycleguys/main/games.htm
Its your worldchoose to conserve
