Office of Residence Life

residence life sustainability

campus calendar.

division contacts.

Fun Facts

• Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months.
  Environmental Defense Fund
• Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to operate a TV for 3 hours.
  Eco-Cycle
• Recycling creates 6 times as many jobs as land filling.
  Colorado Recycles
• About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable‚ yet our recycling rate is just 28%.
  Environmental Protection Agency
• Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees‚ 2 barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1‚260 miles)‚ 4‚100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for 6 months)‚ 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space‚ and 60 pounds of air pollution.
  Trash to Cash
• More than 56 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. during 2007 was recovered for recycling - an all-time high. This impressive figure equals nearly 360 pounds of paper for each man‚ woman‚ and child in America.
  Paper Industry Association Council
• 26 recycled PET bottles equals a polyester suit‚ 5 recycled PET bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket.
  Oberlin College Recycling Program
• The energy needed to replace all the aluminum cans wasted each year is equivalent to 16 million barrels of oil—enough to keep a million American cars on the road for a year.
  Container Recycling Institute
• Recycling glass instead of making it from silica sand reduces mining waste by 70%‚ water use by 50%‚ and air pollution by 20%.
  Environmental Defense Fund
• If every American household recycled just one out of every ten HDPE bottles they used‚ they would keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year.
  Oberlin College Recycling Program
• Making paper from recycled content rather than virgin fiber creates 74 percent less air pollution and 35 percent less water pollution‚ yet the share of total paper fiber coming from recycled material has grown only modestly from 20% in 1921 to 38% today.
  Worldwatch Institute