In honor of America Recycles Day (ARD) we wanted to do a blog that focuses on the benefits of recycling. ARD started in 1997 and has been celebrated on November 15th every year since. The purpose of ARD is to promote the benefits of recycling socially, economically and environmentally while encouraging more people to take part in recycling. The great thing about this movement is, it’s working! Prior to ARD (in 1990) Americans were only recycling 17% of their waste, but as of 2007 that number has risen to 33% and it’s expected that that number is even higher now!
Recycling Statistics
To give you an idea of the impact recycling can have on our environment consider some of these statistics.
Due to the number of aluminum cans recycled in the U.S., aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream. However, the energy it would take to replace that less than 1% (55 billion cans) is equivalent to 16 million barrels of crude oil. This amount of crude is enough to meet the energy needs of all of the homes in Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, and Seattle COMBINED. (source)
America Recycles Day
In 2007, the amount of energy that was saved from recycling aluminum, steel, plastics, glass, newsprint and corrugated packaging was equivalent to:
-The amount of electricity consumed by 17.8 million Americans in one year.
-29 percent of nuclear electricity generation in the U.S. in one year.
-11 percent of the energy produced by coal-fired power plants in the U.S.
-The amount of gasoline used in almost 11 million passenger automobiles in one year. (source)
Electronics RecyclingThese savings are just from the recycling of household goods we use every day at home and at work. However, we need to keep in mind that even more can be done, and even more energy can be conserved.
Electronics recycling had quickly become one of the largest sectors in recycling with its rapid growth over the last decade. It has grown tremendously not just on the commercial end, but also on the consumer end as well. Residential households store 5 times more computer products (by weight) than commercial establishments. A majority of these items are CRT monitors and televisions, followed closely by antiquated computers and laptops. Out of all electronics collected in the U.S. for recycling in 2009, 38% of them were computers.
The most important and often overlooked aspect of electronics recycling is the fact that many electronics contain heavy metals. Metals such as lead, barium, mercury, and others can leach into ground water and compromise the environment around them if these items are not disposed of properly. You can ensure that this will happen by utilizing the services of a certified vendor, we will discuss this more in the next paragraph.
Doing Our Part
As a company that specializes in data destruction and IT asset disposal we at TechR2 have two important goals. First, we provide the best services to our customer to help mitigate their risk pertaining to loose media devices. And secondly, that we ensure all of our clients IT assets are disposed of in an environmentally conscious manner. To make both of these happen, we have spent a lot of time and money to structure our processes and procedures around a strict set of standards and compliances. By doing this we have achieved ISO 27001 certifications, among others. Certifications allow us to provide the safest and most efficient method of processing and destruction of all recycled electronics. It also ensures that all of our downstream vendors have to follow the same processes that we do all the way to the end of the cycle.
We also take it one step further by providing our customers with free employee e-waste events and quarterly green reports. The e-waste events allow our customer to bring their electronics from home and bring them to work to have them properly disposed. And our green reports show our customers the impact that they have made on the environment and the materials that they have kept out of the landfill. If you would like to schedule your own employee e-waste event click on the button below and follow the directions!
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