Recycling Facts Since 1950, Canadians have consumed as much as all the generations before us combined. In North America, we produce enough garbage each day, to fill 70,000 garbage trucks. Lined up bumper to bumper, over a year, they would stretch halfway to the moon. To create just one kilogram of consumer goods, manufacturers create five kilograms of waste. When our trash disappears off the curb it is buried in the ground where it can remain, unchanged for centuries. More than 20% of the garbage thrown out by the average BC household is packaging. Canadians take home more than 55 million plastic bags each week.   If everyone on the earth lived like the average Canadian, we would need at least four planets to sustain our lifestyles and provide all the materials and energy we currently use. We create a lot of waste - over 1,000 kilograms per person each year. Did you know the majority of stuff we throw out isn't "waste" at all, it can be reused or recycled! What Exactly is Recycling? Recycling is a term that describes the process of converting "waste" into resources that can be made into new products. It sounds simple, but there are several critical steps involved: First, it is up to us to separate recyclable material from regular garbage. Then, Urban Impact will collect the materials, sort them, and send them for recycling; the materials go to companies all over the world - and several right here in BC! These companies use the recycled materials as feedstock to produce new products, conserving natural resources. The process isn't over yet! Then we need to buy items made from recycled materials to ensure that companies continue to use recycled material in their products. Buy Recycled! What Happens to the Stuff I Recycle? Office Paper Did you know... The average office worker generates about 73kg of waste each year. 80% of that waste is recyclable paper products. Recycled office paper can become new office paper. Cardboard Did you know... Cardboard boxes can contain up to 100% recycled fibres. On average, the recycled content of a cardboard box is about 59%. The cardboard box is one of the most widely recycled items, the national recovery rate is about 80%. Newspaper Did you know... About 40, 000 trees are cut down each day just to produce the newsprint for Canada's daily papers. Recycling newspapers and magazines reduces the need for mining clay soils, which is used to make newsprint pulp. Old newsprint is made into new newsprint (so the Sunday comics you're reading now may be the Sports pages you read two months ago!). Plastics Did you know... Plastics take about 400 years to break down in a landfill. PET plastic bottles collected for recycling in BC are usually made into carpeting and fibrefill for pillows, sleeping bags and ski jackets, but can also be made into t-shirts and fleeces, automotive parts, and floor tiles! Most plastic containers have a code on the bottom that tells you what type of plastic it is. Glass Did you know... It takes one million years for a glass bottle to break down in a landfill. In BC, recycled container glass is used to create new bottles and jars, fiberglass, and is used as aggregate material in roads and sidewalks. If laid end to end, all the glass bottles collected in recycling programs in Canada would circle the equator four times. Aluminum Did you know... Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television for 3 hours. Aluminum takes 500 years to break down in a landfill. Aluminum is the most valuable recyclable material, when they have been re-melted, aluminum cans can be used in any product made from aluminum. Steel (Tin) Cans Did you know... When recovered steel is used instead of iron ore to make new steel, water consumption is reduced by about 50%. It would take about 100 years for a steel can to break down through natural processes. Most of the steel cans collected in BC are recycled in the Pacific Northwest region. Want more info? Visit Urban Impact on the web at www.urbanimpact.com or call 604-273-0089 Or visit the Recycling Council of B.C. www.rcbc.ca or call 604-732-9352 (REC-YCLE) Click to Download a PDF file of our Recycling Facts