These statistics prove that one person truly can make a difference -- it’s not a cliché, it’s a fact!
So what’s the impact of your recycling? And how much more of an impact could you have by recycling more? Use these interactive tools to estimate your contribution and calculate your impact.
"The Conversionator" is a fun interactive tool that illustrates some amazing facts about the impact of recycling.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's iWARM tool (Microsoft Excel required) estimates energy savings you make by recycling materials rather than throwing them away into a landfill. These savings are expressed in equivalent amounts of electricity. For instance, recycling an aluminum beverage can rather than landfilling it saves enough energy to operate a 60W incandescent lightbulb for 4.3 hours -- or a compact fluorescent bulb for 20 hours!
And this EPA tool converts abstract emissions measurements (like "metric tons" or "therms") into measurements we can all understand, such as: one metric ton of CO2 emissions is equivalent to one automobile running for 70 days.
The environmental impact of your consumption habits varies with how much recycling and composting you do. Try the simple Personal Environmental Impact Estimator (University of Wisconsin) to see how your impact grows as you recycle more.
To encourage people to really think about their own impact on the world around them, the EPA launched Our Planet, Our Stuff, Our Choice, a competition where everyday people created videos on the topics of recycling, waste reduction, composting and reducing consumption. Winning videos can be viewed at the EPA website, including the following Honorable Mention award winner produced right here in Minnesota, by Scott Denfield and Edina Community Channel 16:
The First Prize winner of the "Our Planet, Our Stuff, Our Choice" video competition:
