• More than one million tons of aluminum containers and packaging (soda cans, TV dinner trays, aluminum foil) are thrown away each year.
• Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild an entire commercial air fleet.
• Tossing away an aluminum can wastes as much energy as pouring out half of that can’s volume of gasoline.
• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to keep a 100-watt bulb burning for almost four hours or to run your television for three hours.
• Recycling one ton of plastic saves enough energy to run a refrigerator for a month.
• An average person throws out almost 4 pounds of waste a day. Over the course of a year, that’s almost 1,500 pounds of garbage per person.
• 34% of the earth’s paper gets thrown away

Congratulations SPU! During the clothing drive at the end of last year (2005), you generously donated 4,508 pounds of clothing. Way to go! The clothing went to Northwest Center, a local non-profit organization which helps children and adults with developmental disabilities. The clothes you donated help Northwest Center maintain services for 500 children and adults every month. Let’s keep up the good work!

Overall, 52% of SPU’s waste stream is being recycled. This is a substantial improvement from 2004’s 42%. Non-recyclable waste has decreased from 46% to 43%. The University is also currently recycling 51 tons of “clean green” per year. Yard debris and other clean green recyclables account for 3-4% of the waste stream that is being recycled, lessening our total waste disposal. What is perhaps most inspiring, however, is that the amount of recyclable materials being disposed of as waste has decreased from 16% to just 9%.

There is, naturally, still room for improvement. While the overall figure of recycling disposed of as waste has decreased to 9%, the waste stream composition for some individual buildings is still over 10% in recyclable materials.

With the City of Seattle ordinance applying strict recycling enforcement in January 2006 (requiring waste stream compositions to be 10% or below in recyclable materials), it is very important that we continue to promote recycling awareness and strive to improve problematic areas.

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