Cornwall Council has released a document with facts about waste. These figures shocked me!
At home we recycle everything from plastic bottles to glass bottles, tin cans and cardboard. I assumed that this is what every household did but after reading these figures I realised that they obviously don’t. I then started taking in to account how many places (shops, leisure centres), actually provided recycling bins. Turns out not enough! What will it take for us to show people how important it is to recycle?!
I have picked out some of the quotes that I simply had to share! If you are interested in learning what you can do with your everyday waste at home before throwing it away come along to ‘Waste to Wonderful’ on Saturday 30th May!
- ‘Each Cornish resident throws away 576kg of waste every year. That’s about 1/2 tonne per person.’
- ‘On average, each person in the UK throws away between seven and ten times their body weight in rubbish every year.’
- ‘In the UK we create enough rubbish to fill the Albert Hall every two hours’ - ‘In Cornwall we recycle approximately 25% of our household waste. We could recycle at least 60%.’
- ‘If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 14 million fewer dustbins per year.’
- ‘On average, each person in the UK uses 110 glass bottles and jars per year. Only 27% of these (about 30 per person) get recycled.’
- ‘Recycling just one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60W light bulb for six hours.’ The amount of waste paper buried in landfill sites each year would fill 103,448 double decker buses.’
These are only a few of the facts that I just had to share. If you want to see the rest check out their online article at https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/media/3624430/web-fact-sheet-waste-facts.pdf?hc_location=ufi