Miscellaneous Recycling Facts

Miscellaneous Recycling Facts

An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space -- that's almost 40 football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.

Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!

A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Oil can be recycled, re-refined and used again, reducing our reliance on imported oil.

On average, each one of us produces 4.4 pounds of solid waste each day. This adds up to almost a ton of trash per person, per year.

A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers -- make sure they're recycled!

These recycling facts have been compiled from various sources including the National Recycling Coalition, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Earth911.org. While I make every effort to provide accurate information, I make no warranty or guarantee that the facts presented here are exact. We welcome all polite corrections to our information.
Please also feel free to contact us if you have additional recycling facts to share.

Solid Waste and Landfills

Solid Waste and Landfills

About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material!

Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted.

The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.

The highest point in Hamilton County, Ohio (near Cincinnati) is "Mount Rumpke." It is actually a mountain of trash at the Rumpke sanitary landfill towering 1045 ft. above sea level.

The US population discards each year 16,000,000,000 diapers, 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, 220,000,000 car tires, and enough aluminum to rebuild the US commercial air fleet four times over.

Out of every $10 spent buying things, $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away. Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.

On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.

Glass Recycling Facts

Glass Recycling Facts

Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!

The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.

A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.

Mining and transporting raw materials for glass produces about 385 pounds of waste for every ton of glass that is made. If recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw materials, the waste is cut by more than 80%.

Plastic Recycling Facts

Plastic Recycling Facts

Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!

Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!

Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.

Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.

Paper Recycling Facts

To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.

Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.

If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!

If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.

If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket goes through 60,500,000 paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are in the U.S.!!!

The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year!

The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.

Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.

Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person.

The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.

In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic yards of landfill space.

Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!

The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.

The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.

Aluminum Recycling Facts

A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest!

Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled.

Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.

More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product.

Because so many of them are recycled, aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA estimates.

An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!

There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can be recycled.

We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year.

At one time, aluminum was more valuable than gold!

A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel. In one year in the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy to heat and light 18,000,000 homes!

Stainless Steel Scrap

Today, environmental considerations are at the forefront of material selection for specifiers. With its long service life, 100 % recyclability and valuable raw materials, stainless steel has become an excellent environmental performer. Products made of stainless steel rarely become waste at the useful end of their life. Recycled stainless steel objects are separated in a systematic manner and are recovered to go back into the manufacturing process through recycling.
As like iron, stainless steel contain valuable raw materials like nickel and chromium and that makes its recycling economically viable. The metal is economically recycled on a large scale across the world by recyclers who collect and process stainless steel scrap for remelting.

Scrap collection
The use of stainless steel scrap is fundamental to the process of steel making. The two basic types of scraps include -

• Reclaimed scrap (old scrap) - It includes industrial equipment, tanks, washing machines and refrigerators, which have reached the end of their usage life.
• Industrial scrap (new scrap) - Industrial scrap includes production offcuts or industrial returns from manufacturing by industrial engineering and fabrication sources.

In present days, stainless steel is made up of approximately 60% recycled content, which include -

• 25% reclaimed scrap
• 35% industrial scrap
• 40% new raw materials

Due to the long service life of stainless steel products, the availability of scrap depends on the levels of production from decades ago. With an average 25% content of old scrap, the metal is close to the theoretical maximum content of material from end-of-life products.

Types / Grades of Stainless Steel Scrap
Different grades and varieties of stainless steel scrap is used for recycling purposes and to recover pure metal from the scrap. Given in the table below are some of the important grades / types of stainless steel used in recycling.

Click for the table

Recycling the Scrap

Recycling of stainless steel requires sophisticated technology and specialized expertise to separate and prepare each type of alloy for remelting. A recycling processor feeds the scrap into a large size shredder to break it into small size pieces. The scrap is then analyzed chemically and stored by type. The recycling process may include - blending the scrap into nickel alloys, chrome steels and other types of stainless steels. After blending into piles for particular customer requirements the scrap is then loaded into boxes for export to overseas mills.
Process
Stainless steel scrap along with other raw materials, such as ferrochromium (chrome/iron), nickel and ferro moly (molybdenum/iron) are blended into an electric furnace. After melting, the impurities are removed, the molten metal is refined and the chemistry is analyzed to ascertain what final adjustments are required for a particular type of stainless steel being manufactured. The molten metal is then casted into billets or slabs before final production of sheet, plate, coil, wire and other forms in formulation for use by industrial manufacturers.
Industrial manufacturers produce stainless steel items, which you see in your everyday products, including - cutlery, pots and pans, kitchen sinks and various industrial, architectural and other components. At every stage of the production and application process, the metal retains its basic characteristics and utility value. Unlike various industrial and engineering materials, stainless steel can be returned to its actual quality in the supply chain without any degradation.
Consumption of stainless steel scrap - 2004
Given below are figures that reflect the consumption of stainless steel scrap by some important economies -

• China - 2.8 million tonnes of production using 900,000 tonnes of scrap.
• Japan - 2.4 million tonnes of production capacity using 900,000 tonnes of scrap.
• South Korea - 2.3 million tonnes of production using 800,000 tonnes of scrap.
• Product mix 80% austenitic, 20% ferritic.
• Taiwan - 2.6 million tonnes of production using 600,000 tonnes of scrap.
• India - 1.4 million tonnes of production using 300,000 tonnes of scrap.

Ship Breaking Scrap

Steel scrap from the damaged and demolished ships is a primary source of raw material for the re-rolling mills. Generally at least 70 % of the overall light displacement tonnage of a broken ship comprises of re-rollable scrap. These are converted into rods and bars, which are used in construction applications.
Ship breaking scrap commands a very good price in the market. If prices express the preference of consumer, then there is a great preference for the ship-recycling scrap. This is due to the high quality of steel, which comes in the form of re-rollable scrap from ships. The general features of steel, which is used to design ships are - ability to withstand pressure, high impact and strain on account of severe cold. These features if translated into manufacturing of rods and bars may give us similar characteristics of steel with equal strength.
Ship breaking had been a regular commercial activity in some developed countries, such as UK, USA and Germany during in first half of last century, however after 1960, the activity has shifted from industrialized countries to other regions in Asia and Far East. Among Asian countries, actively involved in Ship breaking operations are India, Bangladesh, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan and Pakistan. India has emerged as a leading country in ship breaking business because of the huge demand of re-rollable and melting scrap steel and other items within the country.
The material refined from ship breaking scrap is superior in terms of yield strength, through thickness ductility, and notch impact strength. In terms of chemical composition, the material is consistent and has low sulfur and phosphorus content. In terms of metallurgical characteristics, steel from ships is normalized, fully killed and has finer and more compact grain structure, free from inclusions, cracks and pores and austenitic characteristics. Hence for all types of applications that require corrosion resistance, impact resistance, machinability, formability, bendability. Steel from ship breaking scrap has been found to be more worthy than steel from billets and ingots.

Process
Ship breaking operations are labor intensive in which discarded ships are beached during high tide and dragged towards the shore by shore based winches. The material that is physically removed from the discarded ships before its further breaking include:

• Removal of ballast water, lubricants, fuel oil, loose cables, electrical items,fire fighting equipment, ladders, window panel, frames etc.
• Removal of movable gear, nylon and steel ropes, shackles, electrical navigation equipment, pulley blocks, paints and lubricant tins, tarpaulin, machinery, spares etc.
• Removal of auxiliary equipment of prime mover machinery, such as diesel generator sets, boilers, air compressors, pumps, valves etc.
• Dismantling of main engine in parts - head, main block, piston, bore and crankshaft. Removal of propeller, its shaft etc.

After the physical removal of these materials from ship, the steel structure of vessel is cut vertically by Oxygen-LPG into large blocks. The cut blocks are dropped on the beach / ground on either side of vessel and large dismantled pieces are pulled up to onshore yard, where they are farther cut up into small pieces for selling and sorting as steel scrap and re-rollable steel for recycling to steel and iron industry.
Grades/ Types
Different grades / types of Ship Breaking Scrap is used to recover pure metal through recycling. Important grades include -
mmon grades of mill prepared steel that are recycled to recover pure steel are given in the table below -

Grades
Details

Ships for Boat Breaking
It Includes whole scrap ships for dismantling or breaking.

Ship scrapping generates various types and grades of scrap metal, typically called scrap species, which are bought and sold in scrap materials market. The scrap markets can be generally categorized in as those dealing in ferrous scrap and nonferrous scrap.
Ferrous scrap from ships comes from forgings and castings, framing, shell plating, deck plating and beams, pillars and girders, bulkheads, miscellaneous hull steel, foundations, and steel superstructures. Moreover, some structural steel outfit, doors and hatches, hull attachments, steward's outfit, deck outfit, hull engineering items, piping, and miscellaneous machinery come in the category of ferrous scrap.
While there are various types of nonferrous scrap, one of special interest is copper-yielding scrap (i.e., cuprous scrap). Cuprous scrap that has a number of subspecies, includes brass, bronze, and several other copper alloys. While copper and copper alloys constitute a small proportion of the total weight of the metals recovered from a ship, they bring a large fraction of the revenue because of their high value.
Ship Breaking Scrap - Associations

• Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI)
• Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS)
• Canadian Association of Recycling Industries (CARI)
• Southeast Recycling Development Council, Inc. (SERDC)

Ship Breaking Scrap - Publications

• Recycling International Magazine
• Scrap (Magazine)