UK Recycling Facts

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 UK Recycling Facts 

Paper Recycling
– On average every person in the UK gets through 38kg of newspapers a year – that's a lot of news! [source: www.ollierecycles.com ]
– We use 12.5 million tonnes of paper and cardboard every year in the UK [source: Confederation of Paper Industries ]
– Over Christmas as much as 83 km2 of wrapping paper will end up in UK rubbish bins, enough to cover an area larger than Guernsey [source: www.wastewatch.org.uk]

General Recycling
– Landfill waste density is typically considered to be 0.7 – 0.85 tonnes/m3. For degraded waste, the density rises to 0.86 – 1 tonnes/m3 [source: UK Gov.]
– Each UK household produces over 1 tonne of rubbish annually, amounting to about 31 million tonnes for the UK each year [source: www.wastewatch.org.uk ]
– Every year, the average dustbin contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3500 showers or 5,000 hours of television. [source: www.assurre.org ]
– On average every person in the UK throws away their own body weight in rubbish every 7 weeks [source: www.wastewatch.org.uk ]
– Every 8 months the UK produces enough waste to fill Lake Windermere (the largest lake in England) [source: www.wastewatch.org.uk ]
– In less than 2 hours the UK produces enough waste to fill the Albert Hall
[source: www.wastewatch.org.uk ]
– Rubbish collection and keeping our streets clean costs council tax payers about £1.6 billion per year [source: UK Gov ]
– Nine out of ten people in England and Wales would recycle more if it was made easier. [source: UK Gov]

Plastic Recycling
– The UK produces 3 million tonnes of plastic waste each year. Approximately 85% is landfilled, 8% incinerated and 7% recycled
Recycling just one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60W light bulb for six hours
– It takes just 25 two litre pop bottles to make one adult size fleece jacket
– 150 million plastic carrier bags are used in the UK each week -they can take up to 500 years to decay in landfill.

Glass Recycling
– The largest glass furnaces produce more than 400 tonnes – that's more than one million bottles and jars – each day! [source: www.ollierecycles.com]
– Glass can be recycled again and again without losing its clarity or purity [source: www.britglass.co.uk ]
– Milk bottles are reused an average of 13 times before recycling [source: Surrey County Council ]
– The UK has more than 50,000 bottle banks [source: www.britglass.co.uk ]
– One bottle bank can hold up to 3,000 bottles before it needs to be emptied. [source: www.britglass.co.uk ]
– We use around 2.5 million tonnes of container glass in the UK. Around 629,000 tonnes of that may be imported.
– In 2005 we recycled 1,259,000 tonnes of used glass (known as ‘cullet').
– Container glass for bottles and jars makes up around 80% of the UK's recycled glass market.
– Any glass product can use up to 80% recycled material.
– Probably the most important thing about recycling glass is the energy saving – when using recycled glass to make new containers, 315Kg of CO2 is saved for every tonne of recycled glass used. Making glass bottles and jars from recycled ones saves energy. The energy saving from recycling one bottle will:
• Power a 100 watt light bulb for almost an hour
• Power a computer for 20 minutes
• Power a colour TV for 15 minutes
• Power a washing machine for 10 minutes [source: www.britglass.co.uk ]

This material has been reproduced from the website www.recyclenowpartners.org.uk of the Waste and Resources Action Programme