Recycle - What For?

All this talk about recycling, how about we go back to the why's of recycling? Too often I find myself wondering again what really happens to that beer bottle or aluminum can I separate for recycling, or how to best explain to my 6 year-old niece what it means and why it matters.

Though I'm glad it's not up to me to do the explaining to my niece; below are some great facts and reminders about where it all goes and why it really does matter - to you , to me and to the sea.

• We dump MOST of the magazines printed in the US each year (about 8 million tons) into landfills. If we recycled just HALF of them, we could save over 12 MILLION CUBIC YARDS of landfill space.
• More than two-thirds of the material going into the landfills is degradable. However, very little change occurs because moisture is the most important environmental variable of degradation. Landfills are kept as DRY as possible to help prevent groundwater contamination from runoff. For example, newspapers are still readable MORE THAN 20 years after being thrown away. Food, such as T-bone steaks and hot dogs, remains relatively unchanged for more than a decade.
• Americans discard 4 million tons of office paper every ear. That‘s enough to build a 12 foot-high wall of paper from New York to California.
• Americans throw away about 10% of the food they buy at the supermarket. This results in dumping the equivalent of more than 21 million shopping bags full of food into landfills every year. But does it just biodegrade – Negative, not nearly as quick as compost. See landfills above.
• Americans discard enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet every 3 months.
• Most bottles and jars contain at least 25% recycled glass. Glass never wears out and it can be recycled forever.
• Plastics are made from petroleum - a limited nonrenewable resource. It is predicted that by the year 2040, the Earth‘s usable petroleum reserves will have been depleted.
• Americans make enough low density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic every year to shrink-wrap the state of Texas. Most if it ends up in landfills.