Avista’s Recycling Program
Why recycle? It’s simply the right thing to do.
Recycling promotes healthy and sustainable environments, and
prevents useful resources from being wasted. Recycling turns
waste into valuable resources and conserves natural resources
such as timber, water and minerals for generations to come.
Avista’s recycling program, in place since the mid 1980’s, essentially
falls into two categories: Investment recovery, and office product
recycling. Investment recovery allows the recycling of scrap
metals, bolts, connectors and wood reels, and office recycling
products accounts for paper, aluminum cans, plastic, glass bottles
and cardboard.
Avista’s recycling program employs fifteen part-time and four
full-time employees from the Association of Retarded Citizens
(ARC) and one Avista employee. Monies gained from investment
recovery goes to cover the cost of the recycling operation,
such as the investment recovery building, ARC payroll, and other
Avista employee salaries related to recycling. Each year recycling
efforts at Avista save about $65,000 or more in avoided costs
of garbage disposal annually.
For some great recycling facts, click on the following links.
Recycling Tidbits
Eye-opening facts about recycling that you probably didn't know:
METALS
- Recycling one aluminum can save enough energy to run a TV for
three hours—or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
- 350,000 aluminum cans are produced every minute!
- Once an aluminum can is recycled, it can be part of a new can
within six weeks.
- Because so many aluminum cans are recycled, they account for
less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA
estimates.
- 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.
- Aluminum can manufacturers have been making cans lighter—in
1972 each pound of aluminum produced 22 cans; today it yields
29 cans.
- We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum pop cans every year.
- At one time, aluminum was more valuable than gold!
- A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount
of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel. In one year in
the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy
to heat and light 18,000,000 homes!
PAPER
- Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times could save
75,000 trees.
- 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.
- During World War II when raw materials were scarce, 33% of all
paper was recycled. After the war, this number decreased sharply.
- If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery
bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A supermarket could use all
of them in under an hour. Reusable totes are convenient, cost
effective and healthier for the environment.
- The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood,
and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000
trees per year.
- The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough
to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
- Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away
every year in the U.S.
- 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.
- In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic
yards of landfill space.
- In 1993, nearly 36,000,000 tons of paper was recovered in the
U.S.—twice as much in 1980.
- 27% of the newspapers produced in America are recycled.
- Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees,
380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000
kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents
a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less
of air pollution!
- The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds
of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same
ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
PLASTIC / STYROFOAM
- 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.
- Americans throw away 25,000,000 plastic beverage bottles every
hour.
- 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
- Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill
up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable.
- The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt
light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution
and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made
from raw materials.
- A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose—and
even longer if it's in the landfill.
Additional Resources
For more information about recycling locally and in general: