January 7th, 2010 @ kadraoui // No Comments
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!
Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
Plastics require 100 to 400 years to breakdown at the landfill.
We now use about 20 times more plastic than we did 50 years ago.
Bottled water costs between $1 and $4 per gallon, and 90 percent of the cost is in the bottle, lid and label.
Plastic bottles can take up to 1000 years before they begin to decompose once buried.
When working with plastics there is often a need to identify which particular plastic material has been used for a given product. Most consumers recognize the types of plastics by the numerical coding system created by the society of the plastics industry in the late 1980s. There are seven different types of plastic resins that are commonly used to package household products. the identification codes listed below can be found on the bottom of most plastic packaging.
(1) Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)
Soda & water containers, some waterproof packaging, tennis balls. 
(2) High-density polyethylene (PE)
Milk, detergent & oil bottles. toys and plastic bags.
(3) Vinyl / polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
Food wrap, vegetable oil bottles, blister packages.
(4) Low-density polyethylene (LDP)
Many plastic bags. shrink wrap, garment bags.
(5) Polypropylene
Refrigerated containers, some bags, most bottle tops,
some carpets, some food wrap, chairs (back/seats).
(6) Polystyrene
Throwaway utensils, meat packing, protective packing.
(7) Other.
Usually layered or mixed plastic. no recycling potential – must be landfilled.
Source: http://www.petrecycling.net
There is a wide range of products made from recycled plastic
There are a number of ways plastics are recycled. Plastics can be:
2-shredding,
3-washing,
4-melting,
5-pelletise.
January 7th, 2010 @ kadraoui // No Comments
To produce each week’s Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you’d get about 700 of them. A supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket goes through 60,500,000 paper bags!!
The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
The production of a ton of paper requires 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water and more energy per ton than glass or steel.
The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.
Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!
The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.
Recycled paper can be made into a wide range of everyday products including:
Paper is one of the easiest materials to recycle. Paper is collected from our kerbside or recycling banks by local authorities and waste management companies.
Once the paper is collected it is then:
January 7th, 2010 @ kadraoui // No Comments
Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!
The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.
A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -and even longer if it’s in the landfill.
Mining and transporting raw materials for glass produces about 385 pounds of waste for every ton of glass that is made. If recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw materials, the waste is cut by more than 80%.
Recycled glass can be used to make a wide range of everyday products and some that are completely unexpected, including:
Glass is collected from our kerbside or recycling banks by local authorities or waste management companies.
Once the glass is collected it is then:
And remember recycling two bottles saves enough energy to boil enough water for five cups of tea!
January 7th, 2010 @ kadraoui // No Comments
A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That’s closed loop recycling at its finest!
Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled items in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled.
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours — or the equivalent of half a gallon of gasoline.
More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product.
Because so many of them are recycled, aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA estimates.
An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!
There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can can be recycled.
We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year.
At one time, aluminum was more valuable than gold!
A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel. In one year in the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy to heat and light 18,000,000 homes!
Recycling aluminum uses only around five 5% of the energy and emissions needed to make it from the raw material bauxite, and as the metal can be recycled time and time again without loss of properties, getting the aluminum recycling habit is one of the best things we can do for the environment.
Aluminum drink cans are collected by almost all local authorities, and increasingly aluminum foil – such as clean ready meal trays, dairy lidding, chocolate foil and wrapping and cooking foil – is also collected.
The complete recycling process is to:
Aluminum foil is a different alloy, and is usually recycled with other aluminum scraps to make cast items such as engine components, where it makes a big contribution to making vehicles lighter and more energy efficient.
January 7th, 2010 @ kadraoui // No Comments
One tree produces the oxygen for just 3 humans alive.
To produce 1 ton of virgin fiber paper, 17 to 31 trees are used.
About 3500 t of waste per day was disposed in the landfill in Bahrain in 2008.
More than 4000 t of waste per day will be disposed in the landfill in Bahrain in 2009.
At least 50% of the waste is recyclable. Disposal could be reduced to under 2000t per day.
You pay more for the Cola-Can than for the content. And it can be recycled 100%.
A PET bottle made out of recycling saves 75% of energy and resources.
Recycling paper causes 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution.
Recycling 1 aluminum can saves enough energy to run your TV for 3 hours.
Recycling 1 ton of aluminum cans conserves the equivalent of 36 barrels of oil.
Recycling is an easy step you can take to help the environment in three main ways:
Reduce the amount of rubbish sent to the landfill
Reusing and recycling items means that less waste has to be buried in the ground in landfill sites, plus we save valuable resources by turning waste into new products! Burying less rubbish means we have to build fewer landfill sites, which frees up another important resource: land.
Save enegry and raw materials
Recycling uses less energy than making items from scratch, for example, recycling an aluminum can saves 95% of the energy needed to make a completely new can.
Help tackle climate change
Reducing the energy used to make and transport products means less carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Recycling also cuts the amounts of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, which can be given off by biodegradable materials as they rot under pressure in landfill sites..
Landfills are massive holes in the earth and often located on the outskirts of cities and towns where the waste is eventually kept at and its contents slowly decompose over the course of several centuries. In the past, sites were simply covered with earth and the trash left to its own devices. Modern landfill sites, however, are better managed; they’re lined and capped to stop toxic chemicals from the trash leaking into the surrounding earth and polluting nearby water sources. Built-in systems capture escaping gases and liquids, with some experiments now taking place to recapture energy released by the decomposition process. Suitable sites for landfills are becoming scarce, though, and concern still exists about the potential for leakage, especially groundwater contamination.
