Many of today’s adults grew up recycling bottles, cans and paper products. That’s made it easy to take the benefits of recycling for granted. Recycle Across America®, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expediting environmental progress, notes that there’s much to learn about the many products that find their way into recycling bins and recycling centers every day.

Residents of the United States discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. Recycling just one ton of plastic bottles saves the same amount of energy as a single two-person household consumes in an entire year. Despite that, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that only around three million tons of plastics were recycled in 2018.

Recycle Across America® notes that every three months enough aluminum is deposited in landfills to build the entire commercial air fleet of the United States.

Recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to power a television for three hours.

According to Recycle Across America®, the amount of office paper discarded each year in the United States is enough to build a 12-foot-high wall from Seattle to New York.

Recycling paper is highly effective, as more than 37 percent of the fiber used to make new paper products in the United States comes from recycled sources.

The Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan is one of the tallest buildings in the United States. Two Empire State Buildings could be filled every three weeks with the glass bottles and jars that end up in American landfills every year.

The Steel Recycling Institute reports that recycling steel saves enough energy to provide electricity to 18 million homes for a year.

Recycle Across America® reports that one ton of recycled cardboard saves 46 gallons of oil. Waste Management notes that 70 percent of commercially shipped cardboard boxes are recovered for recycling. Increasing that percentage could conserve even more oil.