Fascinating Facts

• All the waste that you create in one year weighs about ten times as much as you do.
• 6 billion glass containers are used in the UK every year, but only one quarter of these are recycled. Glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled over and over again, without any loss of quality.
• Over one quarter of the average household bin is filled with paper and cardboard, which can be easily recycled.
• Every day in Edinburgh over 500 tonnes of waste gets sent to landfill - this is the weight of about 100 African elephants!
• A third of all food we buy in the UK is thrown away. What a waste!
• In Scotland over three quarters of the rubbish we throw away could be reused or recycled.
• If Britain grew all the trees we needed to make paper for ourselves, we would need a forest the size of Wales every year.
• Each family in the UK uses the equivalent of 6 trees per year.
• It takes the same amount of energy to make 20 recycled aluminium cans as it does to make just one new one from new materials.