Did you know that buttons were once made from bones? Here are some more fun facts about recycling and the waste we make:

1. A ¼ inch crack under your front door will waste as much energy as a 2” X 2” hole in your wall.

2. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours — or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.

3. On average, a baby will go through 6000 disposable diapers before they are potty trained. Luckily, a British company called Knowaste has developed a process for recycling used diapers.

4. Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Old oil can be recycled, re-refined and used again.

5. Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas.

6. There is a nonprofit company in Japan that recycles old dentures and donates the proceeds to UNICEF.

7. During World War 1, enough metal was salvaged from corset stays to build two warships.

8. It takes 80-100 years for an aluminum can to decompose (break down) in a landfill.

9. Glass takes over 1,000,000 (one million) years to decompose in a landfill.

10. Old crayons don’t decompose but you can send your unused colors into Crazy Crayons to have them recycled into new!

11. Every year nearly 900,000,000 trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills.

12. Every year we generate around 14 million tons of food waste, which is 106 pounds of food waste per person. 570,000 tons of this is composted for a 4.1% recovery rate. The rest, or 13.4 million tons is incinerated or landfilled and occupies 6.3 million cubic yards of landfilled MSW.

13. Americans throw away about 28 billion bottles and jars every year.

14. Americans make more than 200 million tons of garbage each year, enough to fill Bush Stadium from top to bottom twice a day!

15. It takes a 15-year-old tree to produce 700 grocery bags.

16. Disposable diapers last centuries in landfills. An average baby will go through 8,000 of them!

17. Recycling aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy used to make alum cans from new material.

18. Americans throw away 25,000,000 plastic bottles every hour.

19. If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we could save about 25 million trees each year.

20. Used condoms were recycled into hair bands in Southern China. They sold quite well, although several physicians voiced concerns about potential hygiene problems.

21. It is more likely that Americans will recycle than vote.

22. Burying coffins also means that 90,272 tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, and over 30 million feet of hard wood covered in toxic laminates are also buried per year. However, a British company called “Ecopod” offers coffins made from 100% recycled paper.

23. The United States makes up only 4% of the world’s population, yet it is the number one producer of garbage. In 2006, Americans generated more than 250 million tons of garbage. Canada produces 31 million tons of garbage per year.

24. Before the twentieth century, most Americans and Europeans practiced habits of reuse and recycling that prevailed in agricultural communities. For example, in the Middle Ages, tanners would often collect urine to use in tanning animal skins or making gunpowder.

25. Bones were often recycled into common household items such as buttons, glue, and paper.

Out of all the areas of a school, the cafeteria by far generates the most waste. But with a few easy steps, schools can make changes that will make lunchtime more environmentally friendly. How many of these does your school already do?

Recycling Obviously, in an ideal world every cafeteria would have separate bins for all areas of recyclables, from plastic to paper to juice pouches.

Composting Think of all the food kids throw away every day! Now imagine if it all went into a compost bin to be used in a school garden.

Waste Free Lunches Parents can help reduce waste by packing

lunches with a little more thought. Also, having kids bring home uneaten food will help parents figure out just how much their child realistically eats every day.

Forming committees and putting kids in charge will help them not only learn about the benefits of their behavior, but also teach them leadership and organizational skills.

Check out what the Portland Public Schools did!

It’s back-to-school time, so why not give your kids a lesson in eco-friendly school lunches? Each child taking a disposable lunch to school creates an average of 67 pounds of trash during the school year — that translates to millions of pounds of garbage each year. Waste-free lunches not only help reduce garbage in our landfills, but can result in cost savings to our schools in the form of reduced trash fees.

Here are some ideas to help make your child’s lunch box a little kinder on the environment:

• When you use plastic baggies for dry snacks like pretzels or granola bars, ask the child to bring them home and simply refill them with the same or similar item for the next day.
• For “wet” items like carrots or apple slices, you can just put the empty baggie into the fridge until lunch-packing time and use it again at least once, if not twice.
• If your child is responsible enough, use a real utensil instead of a plastic one.  Or just ask for the plastics to be brought home and wash those!
• Put sandwiches in plastic containers instead of wrapping in foil or plastic.
• Recycle your juice pouches.
• Buy in bulk and divide into smaller portions. Items such as applesauce or yogurt can be put into a small plastic container.
• Reuse plastic packaging. When the bread is gone, a sandwich can go in the empty bread bag for a few days. Same goes for bags of nuts, and even cereal and cracker inserts.
• Send cloth napkins to school so your child won’t have to use paper ones. Sounds a little kooky, but in no time at all you’ll get used to throwing them in the wash with your other towels. Think how much paper you’ll save!
• Encourage kids to bring home their leftovers. You will learn what they like and don’t like and you can compost most of what is left over.

As long as there’s been humans on Earth, there’s been garbage. Over time, various methods have been employed to deal with the mess we leave behind each day.

Garbage collection became an official system in England 1875, and the first garbage receptacle

was created, which was used to store ash form burned waste. It was emptied on a weekly basis, and residents were charged even if the bin was empty. The United States caught up 10 years later, with a comprehensive waste management system in New York City. Once incinerating garbage became a regular practice in the U.S. around 1914, horse-drawn carts used for garbage transport were replaced with motor carts.

For the next few decades, inventions from plastic to disposable razors began to increase at a breakneck pace, and dime stores became the norm. By 1968, about one-third of America started sorting their garbage, marking the need for more garbage bins, and recycling became a word recognized in the mainstream. Part population growth and part boom of a consumerist society, the amount of garbage that Americans consumed skyrocketed. Garbage cans became so common that home magazines start publishing articles on how to conceal them or make them part of your home décor. By the 1980s, people started painting and decorating them. There were garbage cans in the shape of dolphins on the coast, and bear-proof garbage bins in the forest.

The classic garbage can also starts to change its appearance in the 1980s as municipal pick-up companies start using trucks that automatically pick up trash bins with their arms. Since 1995, public trash cans in France were replaced with clear hanging bags after terrorist bombings killed 25 people. Meanwhile, the recycle bin industry has taken a life of its own as living green has increased in popularity in the public consciousness. Today, we have three main kinds of trash receptacles: trash cans, dumpsters and trash bins on wheels.

As humans continue to evolve, so will our innovation in dealing with the most basic byproduct of our existence — our garbage. Who knows? Maybe one day drones will be swooping down to collect our trash. Only time will tell.

Every person produces just over 4 pounds of trash each day. That’s a lot of garbage! Before you toss something into a nearby can, consider these facts about decomposition:

• Banana peel decomposes in 2 to 10 days.
• Sugarcane waste takes 30 to 60 days for decomposition.
• Thread decomposes within 3 to 14 months.
• Cotton decomposes within a month
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• Paper carry bags decompose in 2 to 5 months.
• Rope takes 3 to 14 months for decomposition.
• Orange peel decomposes within 6 months.
• Cigarettes take a year to 12 years for decomposition.
• Leather shoes decompose in 25 to 40 years.
• Nylon clothes take 30 to 40 years for decomposition.
• Plastic carry bags decompose in 15 to 1000 years.
• Aluminum cans decompose in 80 to 100 years.
• Sanitary napkins and children’s diapers take 500 to 800 years for decomposition.
• Glass bottles decompose in 1,000,000 years.
• Plastic bottles and cans never decompose.

About 90% of the contents of our garbage cans could be reused or recycled. Think twice before throwing the trash into garbage can. You can reduce the use of some items, can reuse some of them like paper and cardboard, and take some of them (cans, plastic, bottles etc) to a recycle bin.