Q1: How many aluminum cans would you need to stack on top of each other to get to the moon?
– A: 3.3 billion (3,362,349,744).
Q2: Approximately how much energy does recycling a single plastic bottle save?
– A: Enough to power a 60-watt light bulb for six hours.
Q3: How much CO2 is avoided by recycling more than 130 million tons of scrap material throughout the United States?
– A: The equivalent of the CO2 annually emitted by 642 coal-fired power plants or three times the total amount of electricity used by all of the households in the United States each year. This constitutes approximately four percent of the entire US carbon inventory.
Q4: What were the six largest markets for US scrap exports in 2010?
– A: China, the EU, Canada, South Korea Turkey and Taiwan.
Q5: What is the difference between ferrous and non-ferrous metals?
– A: Ferrous metals are metals that contain iron and are magnetic. The most common ferrous metal is steel. Non-ferrous metals are not magnetic and are usually more resistant to corrosion than ferrous metals. The most common non-ferrous metals are aluminum, copper, lead, zinc and tin.
Q6: One metric ton of electronic scrap from personal computers contains more gold than that recovered from how many tons of gold ore?
– A: 17 tons.
Q7: What year (BC) did people learn to melt or re-melt metal?
– A: Approximately 7000 BC.
Q8: An artificial turf field uses 125 tons of crumb rubber made from scrap tires. How many tires – approximately — are recycled to make the field?
– A: 20,000 scrap tires.
Q9: If you can’t grow a commodity, how do people find the materials they need to manufacture new products?
– A: It has to be mined or recycled.
Q10: How much stainless steel is recycled in the United States each year?
– A: Enough stainless steel is recycled in the United States each year to build more than 1,000 St. Louis Gateway Arches — the tallest monument in the United States and the tallest stainless steel monument in the entire world.
Q11: What is the recycling rate of cars?
– A: Approximately 102 percent.
Q12: If the ferrous scrap processed in the United States in 2010 were put into rail cars, how long would the train stretch?
– A: More than 10,400 miles — further than the distance from Washington, DC, to Sydney, Australia.
DATA PROVIDED BY ISRI, THE LEADING TRADE ASSOCIATION OF THE RECYCLING INDUSTRY