More than half of the cities in the US will exhaust their current landfills during 1990! Recycling is cheaper than paying for more landfill space. 84% of household garbage is recyclable. Each of us produce 1200 pounds of garbage per year, average. (According to the Earth Works Group, stopping junk mail should be the first step in saving the earth.)

Newspaper, cardboard and other recyclable paper products make up 40% of your garbage. Recycled newsprint would cut 95% of paper-making air pollution. Recycling one edition of the Sunday New York Times, would leave 75,000 trees standing. In 1987 Japan shipped us back 4.2 million tons of our waste paper -- in the form of TV and stereo boxes!

Glass bottles will still be littering the landscape a thousand years from now. Recycling glass will save energy (1 bottle = 100 watts x 4 hours) and prevent pollution (20% of air and 50% of water pollution vs new glass). Recycling an aluminum can saves the energy equivalent of half a can of gasoline and cuts related air pollution by 95%.

We also average throwing away 190 pounds per person per year of plastics. The variety of plastic materials causes recycling problems. Plastics are some of the most important uses of petroleum: we used a billion barells of petroleum (5 months of imports) just to make plastic products. Plastics also cause some of the most difficult disposal problems -- six pack rings and other plastic products strangle thousands of birds and block the digestive tracts of many other sea animals. Over 350 million pounds of packaging was dumped in the oceans last year.

We make twice as much trash per capita as other industrial countries -- and recycle only a third as much! George, are you listening?