Recycle Your Waste

Recycling Facts

General

• Up to 60% of the rubbish that ends up in the dustbin could be recycled.
• The unreleased energy contained in the average dustbin each year could power a television for 5,000 hours.

Paper

• We use 12.5 million tonnes of paper and cardboard every year in the UK.
• The average person in the UK gets through 38kg of newspapers per year.
  It takes 24 trees to make 1 ton of newspaper.

Plastic Bottles

• Recycling just one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60W light bulb for six hours.
• It takes just 25 two litre pop bottles to make one adult size fleece jacket.

Steel

• In the UK we use around 12.5 billion steel cans every year, or 600 per household, but nearly 10 billion of these still go to landfill.
• Producing steel from recycled material saves 75% of the energy needed for steel made from virgin material.
• Every steel can is 100% recyclable. It can be recycled over and over again into products like bicycles and of course new cans.

Aluminium

• £36 million worth of aluminium is thrown away each year.
• Aluminium cans can be recycled and ready to use in just 6 weeks.
• If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 14 million fewer full dustbins per year.
• In the UK, 75% of all drinks cans are made of aluminium.
• Amazingly, recycling it requires only 5% of the energy it takes to make new aluminium – and produces only 5% of the CO2 emissions.

Glass

• Each UK family uses an average of 500 glass bottles and jars annually.
• One bottle bank can hold up to 3,000 bottles before it needs to be emptied. 
• Glass is 100% recyclable and can be used again and again.
• Glass that is thrown away and ends up in landfills will never decompose.