Did you know? - Rubbish and recycling facts and figures

Sometimes it's hard to comprehend the damage being done by not recycling rubbish and waste we easily could.

The facts and figures below put our wastefulness into perspective:

Britain throws away 27 million tonnes of rubbish each year. This weighs the same as 3½ million double decker buses and would stretch 1½ times around the world.
To grow enough trees to provide the amount of paper that Britain uses each year, you would need a forest the size of Wales.
On average, for every £50 spent on a product, £8 pays for the packaging that ultimately ends up in the bin.
There is, on average, 60% of waste in rubbish bins that could be recycled.
£34 million worth of aluminium cans are currently languishing in bins all over the UK just waiting to be cashed in and recycled.
The number of disposable nappies thrown into British bins for each baby weighs the same as a family car.
80% of a car can be recycled.
If the plastic carrier bags given by shops to costumers each year were placed on the floor, they would cover the whole of London.
Each person throws out 1 ton of rubbish each year.
Each person in the UK uses 15 trees worth of paper every year.
It costs the UK approximately £130 million every year to dispose of waste packaging.
The energy required to make one aluminium can from raw materials could be used to make 20 recycled cans.
It would take five times the world’s fleet of super tankers, in a nose to tail queue, stretching six times around the world, to transport one year’s worth of waste produced by Britain alone.
Each year, the UK uses 14 billion cans. If these cans were placed end-to-end, they would stretch 500,000 miles - the same distance to the moon and back.
A 60 watt light bulb could be powered for 6 hours by the energy saved from recycling just one plastic bottle.
Every year we fill approximately 300 million square metres of landfill. This is the same as covering the pitch at Wolverhampton Wanderers Molineux Stadium 28,450 times over.
Each hour in Britain, we produce enough rubbish to fill the Royal Albert Hall.