The Green Parenting Guide to Recycling

Currently, about 25% of the garbage in the U.S. is recycled, but experts estimate that 65% of our garbage could be recycled. Recycling options vary by city or county, but most areas collect office paper, cardboard, magazines, newspaper, aluminum, plastics, glass (colored or clear), steel, yard trimmings, tires, batteries, and building materials.

Use this chart to get a better idea of what and why you should recycle. Then check out Earth 911 to find out where to send your recyclables. For a printable copy you can post on the fridge, click on Why Recycle?

What	Why		Where
	What It Makes	What It Saves
Aluminum	New aluminum cans	Uses 95% less energy to make a can from recycled materials than from virgin ore
#1 PET Plastic (Bottles for soft drinks, water, juice, liquor, cough syrup, tennis balls and cleaning products)	New plastic containers, sweaters, shoes, luggage, upholstery, and carpeting, fiberfill for sleeping bags and coats, and fabric for T-shirts and tote bags.	Manufacturing bottled water uses over 1.5 million barrels of oil per year. In one year, that’s enough oil to fuel 100,000 cars
#2 HDPE Plastics (milk and laundry detergent bottles)	New bottles or plastic pipe.	47% of all plastic bottles used in the U.S. are HDPE
Newspaper	Newspaper	If all our newspaper were made from recycled paper, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
Corrugated Cardboard	Chipboard, boxboard (i.e., cereal boxes), paper towels, tissues, and printing paper	Uses about 75% less energy to make cardboard from recycled materials than from virgin pulp.
Steel Cans	New steel cans	If we recycled all of our steel cans we would save 144 kilowatt hours of electricity, 63 pounds of coal, 112 pounds of iron, and 5.4 pounds of limestone.
Glass	New glass jars and bottles and fiberglass insulation.	Using recycled glass to make new glass requires 40% less energy than making it from virgin materials.
Paper	New paper, molded packaging, compost and kitty litter.	Paper products make up about 35% of the trash in the U.S. (the largest single sector of waste.)