Facts & Figures

• To make one ton of recycled paper saves:
     17 trees
     3.3 cubic yards of landfill space
     360 gallons of water
     100 gallons of gasoline
     60 pounds of air pollutants
     10,401 kilowatts of electricity (1)
• About 218,000 tons of shredded paper is used each year for animal bedding (2).
• Recycling paper uses 60% less energy than manufacturing paper from new

           timber (3).

• Used newspapers are commonly used to make tissue and cardboard, while magazines are recycled into newspaper (4).
• Each person in the United States consumes about 675 pounds of paper per

           year (4).

• Every year, Americans throw away enough writing paper to build a wall 12 feet high that will stretch from Los Angeles to New York City (5).
• If everyone in the United States recycled one-tenth of their newspapers, we could save about 25 million trees every year (5).
• In the United States, more than one-third of the fiber used to make newspaper products comes from recycled paper (2).
• The material that makes up the largest percentage of the waste stream is paper (5).
• Recycling paper saves valuable landfill space and extends the lives of our

           landfills (1).

• Over the past five years, more paper has been recycled than has been sent to landfills (2).
• Nearly 80% of all United States paper-makers use some recovered paper to

           make everything from newspaper to paperboard packing to office paper (2).

• 86% of Americans have access to curbside or drop-off paper recycling

          programs (2).

Sources

1 Source: Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) web site: www.nerc.org/fshetts/ma.html
2 Source: American Forest & Paper Association
3  Source: Environmental Protection Agency
4 Source: Temperate Forest Foundation
5  Source: Browning-Ferris Industries