Well these are the latest facts and figures I have been able to find:
Recycling Facts:
- Across the UK, recycling rates
increased from 17% to 34% over the
last five years.
- Between 2003 – 2008, the 33.8 million
tonnes of household waste sent for
recycling would fill the Royal Albert
Hall over 1,000 times.
- The 30 million tonnes of CO2
equivalent saved is equivalent to
taking 9.4 million cars – or
one-third of all cars on the road in
Britain – off the road for one year.
Last year our household recycling
alone saved 6.5 million tonnes of CO2
which is the same as avoiding over 1
million return flights from London to
Sydney.
In total, for the period 2003/04 – 2007/08, the quantity of cans, glass, paper, plastic and textiles recycled was equivalent to the following:
- 10.1 billion aluminium cans – that’s the comparable to saving 1.6 million
tonnes of raw materials and, if laid
end-to-end, the cans would stretch to
the moon three times.
- 24.2 billion steel food cans – that’s 21 times the amount of steel used in
the construction of Wembley stadium
- 9.5 billion 75cl glass wine bottles – that’s equal to saving 5.4 million
tonnes of raw materials including
silica sand, limestone and dolomite,
soda ash and other minerals.
- 26.1 billion newspapers – that’s equivalent to supplying all men and
women in the UK over the age of 15
with one newspaper per day for over
two years.
- 13.5 billion 500ml plastic bottles – like the world’s population recycling
two plastic bottles each over the
five year period.
- 2.8 billion square metres of cotton fabric – which if laid out flat would
amount to enough material to cover an
area the size of London two times.
The recycling industry has an annual turnover of approximately £17 billion and contributes around £5.5 billion to the UK economy, while directly and indirectly supporting around 100,000 jobs.
Hope this helped.
answered
Sep 06 '10 at 17:03
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