Facts and Figures

…about waste

• The average family dispose of four glass bottles or jars, thirteen cans, three plastic bottles and five kilos of paper, each week.
• 99 per cent of an old fridge can be recycled. Once the CFCs are removed, the fridge can be broken down into

• steel
• ground CFC – free foam
• mixed plastics
• aluminium and copper

• Over 100 million tonnes of waste comes from households over England and Wales each year, this increases by around three per cent every year
• The average school dustbin usually contains;

• 14 per cent plastic
• 26 per cent paper
• 7.5 per cent metal
• 0.5 per cent fabric
• 15 per cent cardboard
• 1 per cent glass
• 19 per cent food and green waste
• 17 per cent other things (made from two materials e.g. crisp packets, drinks cartons or items that did not fit into any other category, such as sponge)

• England recycles or composts a mere 14.5 per cent of its household waste, shamefully, one of the lowest rates in Europe.

All of the above can be re-used

• Each UK household produces around one tonne of rubbish per year, resulting to around 27 million tonnes for the UK per year.

…wood and paper

• Once recycled, good quality timber can be made into chipboard or MDF.
• With every tonne of recycled paper, 64 per cent less energy, 50 per cent less water and 74 per cent less air pollution in comparison to the same quantity of virgin wood pulp, highlight the extreme benefits of recycling.
• Recycled poor quality or contaminated timber is used for roadways or coverings at landfill sites.

…plastics

• The average UK household uses 440 plastic bottles per year, alarmingly, only 24 of these are recycled.
• Recycled plastics can be used for the production of road signs or garden furniture.
• Soft drink bottles can be melted down and made into fibres that are used for clothing. Surprisingly, a medium man-sized fleece requires just 25 bottles!

…can

• A recycled aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours!
• More than 2,000,000,000 are already collected.
• Each UK resident uses an equivalent of 200 cans per year, this considered, each can placed end to end would reach as high as the Tower of London!
• Nearly 5,000,000,000 aluminium cans could be recycled each year in the UK.
• If all the aluminium drink cans recycled in the UK last year were laid end to end, they would stretch from John O Groats to Lands End 140 times.
• Every steel can is 100 per cent recyclable. It can be recycled over and over again into products like bicycles and, of course, new cans.
• The average annual consumption of aluminium cans is 1.3kg per person or 3.2kg per household.