Recycling facts that everyone should know
In celebration of this year earth day, we are putting together a few wonderful and odd recycling facts that will make you think twice. All of our swimwear at Vanilla Sand is made from regenerated ocean nylon and polyester and processed with local craftsmanship.
- It takes centuries for a disposable diaper to break down in a landfill. On average, one baby will go through 8,000 diapers. Cloth diapers are not as advantageous, yet they are reusable. In the U.S. alone, more than 20 billion diapers are thrown out a year, accounting for over 3.5 million tons of waste.
- Recycling aluminum cans saves 95 % of the energy needed to produce new cans and the most recycled packaging commodity in the world is aluminium.
- In the U.S. alone, people throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles per hour. It takes about 500 years for each one to decompose.
- The amount of waste created by humans has risen by more than 10,000% over the last 100 years.
- There are about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square mile of our oceans. Every year more than 1 million seabirds die due to ocean pollution.
- Recycling can be fast. According to Novelis’s research, an aluminum can that is recycled can be back on a grocery store shelf within 60 days. That is a very fast turnaround.
- 21.5 million tons of food waste is generated each year. If this amount of food were composted, it would reduce the same amount of greenhouse gas as removing 2 million cars off the road.
- Trash and recycling is a modern problem. A couple hundred years ago, most people had habits of reusing and recycling due to the times and economy as more items were manufactured at home and stores were fewer and harder to access. So let’s be creative!
