The United States is the No. 1 trash-producing county in the world. Each person in the U.S. throws out about 4 pounds of garbage per day; 1,609 per year. New York City alone throws out enough garbage each day to fill the Empire State Building. This means that 5 percent of the world’s people generates 40 percent of the world’s waste.

One 15-year-old tree can be used to make about 700 paper grocery bags, which one supermarket could use all of in under an hour. This means in one year, one supermarket goes through 60,500,000 paper bags. Recycling a single run of Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees. To produce each week’s Sunday newspapers in the U.S., 500,000 trees must be cut down. Recycling paper instead of making it from new material generates 74 percent less air pollution and uses 50 percent less water. When you smell a garbage dump, what you’re actually smelling is the paper in the dump.

Americans throw away 25 million plastic beverage bottles every hour and 25 billion Styrofoam cups every year. Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable. The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20 percent less air pollution and 50 percent less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials. It takes 90 percent less energy to recycle an aluminum can than to make a new one.

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

– Contributed by Garaventa Enterprises, Inc.