Being eco-friendly is not about hugging trees; it's about using and re-using anything and everything you can think of.
Each year, the typical American family throws out 2,460 pounds of paper, 540 pounds of metals, 480 pounds of glass and 480 pounds of food scraps.
All told, each of us throws away more than 1,200 pounds of trash per year, far more than people in most other countries.
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Ecology by the numbers
Reusing and re-cycling can help free up space in landfillds.
 
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About 80 percent of that garbage ends up in landfills. Of the remaining 20 percent, about half is recycled and half is incinerated.
One big problem is that we are running out of landfill space -- more than half of the nation's landfills will be full within 10 years.
Here are some statistics about trash:
 | | The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years. |
| | Each gallon of gas used by a car contributes about 19 pounds of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. For a single car driving 1,000 miles a month, that adds up to 120 tons of carbon-dioxide a year. |
| | About 110 million Americans live in areas with levels of air pollutants the federal government considers to be harmful. |
| | Americans dump 16 tons of sewage into their waters -- every minute of every day. |
| | Americans throw away 25 billion Styrofoam coffee cups every year, and 2.5 million plastic beverage bottles every hour. |
| | Americans throw away about 40 billion soft drink cans and bottles every year. Placed end to end, they would reach to the moon and back nearly 20 times. |
| | Eighty-four percent of a typical household's waste -- including food scraps, yard waste, paper, cardboard, cans, and bottles -- can be recycled. |
| | Using recycled paper for one print run of the Sunday edition of The New York Times would save 75,000 trees. |
| | America's refrigerators use about 7 percent of the nation's total electricity consumption--the output of about 25 large power plants. |
