The American public throws away enough aluminum to rebuild the entire US commercial air fleet every 3 months.

If the Pilgrims had used aluminum cans at the first Thanksgiving, the cans would still be around.

Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water.

Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper per year, or 580 pounds per person.

America's daily use of computer paper could go around the world 40 times.

It takes more than 500,000 trees to make the newspapers Americans use in one Sunday.

The steel industry recycles nearly 19 billion steel cans into new products each year - about 600 cans recycled every second!

Annually, enough energy is saved by recycling steel to supply the city of Los Angeles with almost a decade worth of electricity.

It is estimated that if all aerosol cans were recycled in North America, there would be enough steel to make 160,000 new cars.

The U.S. Generates approximately 208 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) per year; that’s 4.3 pounds per person per day.

Packaging makes up about 1/3 (by weight) of household trash and about 10% of the price of food.

Each year Americans throw away 25 trillion Styrofoam cups.

For each bag of garbage we take to the curb, industry creates the equivalent of 71 bags of waste.

Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail per year. About 44% of junk mail is never opened. Every person in the U.S. receives the equivalent of one and a half trees per year.

Nationwide, leaves and yard trimmings amount to approximately 28 million tons (or 13.4 %) of the waste stream.

Each year, the average person creates about 360 pounds of food and yard waste.

27% of all food produced in North America is wasted.

Factoids compiled by Environmental Systems of America