Bennu Infographic: 10 Facts about Plastic Recycling
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Bennu Infographic: 10 Facts about Plastic Recycling, a blog post by EcoGoodz, a used clothing wholesale supplier

In our last post, we told you about Precious Plastics, which has created and provided open-source plans, how-to videos, and an online forum for at-home plastic recycling. In keeping with that theme, here are 10 facts about plastic recycling, compiled into an infographic by Bennu, a social media marketing company.

bennu-plastic-infographic

  1. PET plastic (polyethylene terephthalate) was invented almost 40 years ago–in 1977.
  2. Recycling 1 ton (2000 lbs) of PET plastic containers saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space. That’s the equivalent of about 3 full-size pickup truck beds. (An average full-size pickup truck holds 2.5 cubic yards.)
  3. Recycling saves energy! You could run a 60-watt bulb for SIX HOURS on the energy saved by recycling a single plastic bottle.
  4. The US has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to plastic recycling. Sweden recycles about 80% of its plastic, Japan recycles about 70%, Brazil about 55% while the US recycles a mere 27% of plastic bottles.
  5. Bennu makes a backpack out of recycled plastic! It takes about 20 16-oz bottles to make one backpack.
  6. This is sad: In 2006 the average American recycled only 38 of the 167 water bottles he or she used. That’s about 23%. We can do better!
  7. Recycling saves energy (we know, we already covered this one…but we just can’t emphasize it enough)! Using recycled plastics instead of virgin materials to manufacture products saves 70% of the energy by comparison.
  8. 113 water bottles for each of us: Over 36 billion PET water bottles are sold in the United States each year.
  9. There are more than 1600 plastic recycling companies in the US–this number is triple what it was a few years ago.
  10. Curbside collection programs abound: There are about 9400 collection points for PET plastic here in the US.

We hope these facts have inspired you to reduce your plastic consumption (specifically plastic water bottles!), and increase your plastic recycling efforts!

 

 

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EcoGoodz is a used clothing wholesale supplier in the US. We supply used clothing wholesale in two main forms: credential clothing, and mixed rags. We also supply paired used shoes wholesale, as well as bulk linens. All commodities are sold by the pound, either by the truckload or the container load. For more information, please contact us.

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