3 billion single-use cardboard pizza boxes are consumed in the USA every year. (Smurfit) That’s enough to circle the earth 26 times*. It’s also the length of 11,666,667 football fields*. And it’s 10,045 times the height of Mt. Everest*! *Based on 14” pizza boxes.
Food-contaminated cardboard disposable containers are not recyclable in most communities, only commercially compostable.
Food containers that are made from recycled cardboard are tainted with BPA (Bisphenol A), a chemical with substantiated health risks.
Americans purchase 300 million+ cases of wine annually, while the national recycling rate for wine bottles is only 30 percent. (U.S. Wine Industry, EPA)
It takes approximately 1 million years for a glass bottle to break down in a landfill. (EPA)
5.5 billion lunches are served in school programs yearly. (National School Lunch Program) Most foods in those programs are individually wrapped or packaged in single-use disposable containers.
18,670 pounds of lunch trash is generated per year by the average elementary school. At approximately 67 pounds of trash per student (Center for Ecoliteracy), this is equivalent to the weight of the average 9-year-old American child.
The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year! (Recycling Revolution, National Recycling Coalition, EPA, Earth911)
Food packaging (mostly paper) makes up 32% of household trash. (EPA)
80 percent of all products that are produced in the United States are used only once and then discarded, and 95 percent of plastic and 50 percent of all of the aluminum beverage cans that are thrown away never get recycled. (Heather Rogers, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage)
