• Home
• About Us
• Position Statement, 
• Guiding Principles, 
• Vision, Mission, and Goals, 
• Sustainability Paradigm, 
• Sustainability Committee, 
• Go Green
• Energy, 
• Recycling, 
• Water, 
• Parking and Transportation, 
• Planning and Construction, 
• Purchasing, 
• Dining, 
• Custodial and Maintenance, 
• Health and Safety, 
• Community and Civic Engagement, 
• Research, 
• Teaching, 
• Strategic Focus, 
• Implementation Framework, 
• Education and Outreach, 
• News
• Announcements, 
• Calendar of Events, 
• Press Releases, 
• Photo Gallery, 
• Contact Us
• Blog, 
• WE CAN Volunteer Form, 

RECYCLING MYTHS & FACTS

MYTH: Recycling is a time-consuming burden on the American public.

FACT: In a bizarre example of “research,” the author of “Recycling is Garbage” asked a college student to measure the time he spent separating materials for recycling during one week. The total time spent was eight minutes.

MYTH: There are no markets for recyclable materials.

FACT: Recycling is not just an alternative to traditional solid waste disposal, it is the foundation for large, robust manufacturing industries in the United States that use recyclable materials. Recycling provides manufacturing industries with raw materials that are less expensive than virgin sources, a long-term economic advantage that translates into value for consumers who ultimately spend less on products and packaging.

MYTH: Recycling should pay for itself.

FACT: We do not expect landfills or incinerators to pay for themselves, nor should we expect this of recycling. Current experience shows that well-run community recycling programs can be cost-competitive with disposal options, as are the vast majority of commercial recycling programs. On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.

MYTH: If you mail a pair of old Nike shoes to Beaverton Oregon for recycling, Nike will send back a new pair.

FACT: Nike does recycle shoes through their Reuse-A-Shoe program (www.nikereuseashoe.com), but you won’t get a new pair of shoes in return. These shoes are recycled into premium sport surfaces, such as basketball courts.

Other Recycling Facts

• Almost 40% of the U.S. waste stream is paper.

• Americans throw out about 85% of the office paper used.

• We save 17 trees for each ton of recycled newspaper.

• Making one ton of recycled paper uses only about 60% of the energy needed to make a ton of virgin paper.

• We save enough energy by recycling one aluminum can to run a TV set for three hours.

• Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.

• Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

• The 36 billion aluminum cans land filled last year had a scrap value of more than $600 million. (Some day we’ll be mining our landfills for the resources we’ve buried.)

• Americans go through 2.5 million plastic bottles every year.

• If every American household recycled just one out of every ten bottles they used, we’d keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year.

Sources: DOE Energy Star, Oberlin College Recycling,
Iowa State University