What to Know About Recycled Items

Many of today’s adults grew up recycling bottles, cans and paper products. That’s made it easy to take the benefits of recycling for granted.

• Residents of the United States discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. Recycling just one ton of plastic bottles saves the same amount of energy as a single two-person household consumes in an entire year.

• Recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to power a television for three hours.

• Recycling paper is highly effective, as more than 37 percent of the fiber used to make new paper products in the United States comes from recycled sources.

• One ton of recycled cardboard saves 46 gallons of oil. Waste Management notes that 70 percent of commercially shipped cardboard boxes are recovered for recycling. Increasing that percentage could conserve even more oil.