Environmental & Administrative Services
500 Court Street, Suite E
Defiance, OH 43512
Director Environmental & Administrative Services
P: (419) 782-5442
F: (419) 784-3268
Recycling Fun Facts
Aluminum Recycling Facts
A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest!
Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled.
More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product.
An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now! There is no limit to the amount of times aluminum can be recycled.
We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year.
Paper Recycling Facts
To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.
Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person.
The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.
The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.
Plastic Recycling Facts
Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!
Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.
Glass Recycling Facts
Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!
A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.
Miscellaneous Recycling Facts
An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space -- that's almost 40 football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Oil can be recycled, re-refined and used again, reducing our reliance on imported oil.
On average, each one of us produces 4.4 pounds of solid waste each day. This adds up to almost a ton of trash per person, per year.
A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers -- make sure they're recycled!
The US population discards each year 16,000,000,000 diapers, 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, 220,000,000 car tires, and enough aluminum to rebuild the US commercial air fleet four times over.
Out of every $10 spent buying things; $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away. Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.
Defiance County prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age,
disability, and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation or political beliefs.
Defiance County is also an equal opportunity employer.