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There’s no limit to the number of times glass can be recycled. Recycling just one glass bottle will save enough energy to power ten energy- efficient light bulbs for nearly an hour. The energy saving from recycling one bottle will >
Power a 100 watt light bulb for almost an hour
Power a computer for 20 minutes or a colour TV for 15 minutes
We use around 2.4 million tonnes of container glass in the UK every year and we only recycle 1.2 million tones. 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.
| A4 Recycled Notepad - it used to be a car tyre! | ||
Only £6.95 |
Steel >
In the UK we use around 12.5 billion steel cans every year, or 600 per household, but nearly 10 billion of these still go to landfill. In 2005 we recycled around 50% of steel packaging including over 2.5 billion steel cans! The government target is to increase that to 54% by 2008.
Producing steel from recycled material saves 75% of the energy needed for steel made from virgin material. Every steel can is 100% recyclable. It can be recycled over and over again into products like bicycles and of course new cans.
Aluminium >
If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 14 million fewer full dustbins per year. If all of the aluminium cans recycled in the UK in 1998 were laid end to end, they would stretch from Land's End to John O'Groats more than 160 times.
Amazingly, recycling it requires only 5% of the energy it takes to make new aluminium – and produces only 5% of the CO2 emissions. Just one recycled aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television set for three hours!
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Paper >
On average, each person in the UK uses over 200 kg of paper per year. 66 % of this is collected for recycling. We use 12.5 million tonnes of paper and cardboard every year in the UK.
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.
About one fifth of the contents of household dustbins consist of paper and card, of which nearly half is newspapers and magazines. This is equivalent to over 4kg of waste paper and card per household in the UK each week.
Recycled paper made up 80.6% of the raw materials for UK newspapers by the end of 2006. For Every tonne of paper used for recycling we save 30000 litres of water, 3000 – 4000KWh electricity (enough for an average 3 Bedroom house for one year) & 95% of air pollution.
Plastic >
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. 13 billion plastic carrier bags are used in the UK each year.
