Facts about Trash to Share with your Students

• Waste from packaging accounts for 30% of all waste generated
  each year.

• A Scrap of paper lying on the ground will take a full month to
  decompose and a pop can doesn’t disappear for over 200 years.

• The average person generates 600 times their adult weight in
  garbage during their lifetime.

• Americans go through 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

• A ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees and three cubic yards of
  landfill space.

• More than 70% of all the waste generated in the United States
  could be recycled.

• 2.1 Billion Pounds of cigarette filters were discarded worldwide
  in 1998.

• Plastic bags will take 10-20 years to biodegrade. Biodegrade
  means to break down naturally.

• Aluminum cans will take 80 – 100 years to biodegrade.

• Glass Bottles will take 1 million years to biodegrade.

• Plastic Bottles will never biodegrade.

• The annual cost of roadside litter control nationwide is $155 million.

• The items most often found during litter clean ups are cigarette
  butts and fast food wrappers.

• Each individual produces four to five pounds of trash daily,
  amounting to one ton of trash yearly.

• A family of three produces approximately five pound of used
  newspaper a week, 20 pounds a month, or 250 pounds a year.

• Most littering occurs within 5 meters of a garbage can.

• Litter impacts real estate values. Good stores and important
  businesses will not locate in a community that lacks the pride to
  effectively control litter.

• Men litter twice as much as women.

Taken from Keep Alliance Beautiful
205 W. 4th Ave., PO Box 324, Alliance, NE 69301
Phone & Fax: (308) 762-1729

Trash Facts (download pdf)

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