Here's a quiz (see end of this "tirade" for the answers):

1. What percentage of glass bottles do Americans recycle each year?
2. What percentage of plastic bottles?
3. Aluminum cans?
4. Recycling rates have increased or declined in recent years?

In the US alone, over 1 trillion cans (1,010,000,000,000) have been trashed, not recycled, since 1972 - the year the Aluminum Association began collecting recycling data. According to the Container Recyling Institute, this amounts to 17.5 million tons of aluminum - worth about $21 billion at 2004 prices. Ironically, the 1 trillionth can not recycled coincides with the 40th anniversary of the aluminum can. Happy anniversary.

CRI's press release states that only 44% of cans sold in 2003 were recycled - 820,000 tons. And, according to Jenny Gitlitz, CRI's research director:

Replacing the estimated 820,000 tons of cans wasted in 2003 with new cans made from virgin materials will unnecessarily consume the energy equivalent of 26 million barrels of crude oil, and will generate over 3.4 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

In failing to recycle more than one trillion cans in the last 40 years, we have squandered the energy equivalent of over 550 million barrels of crude oil—enough to supply the total residential energy needs of about 35 million American homes for a year. Replacing these wasted cans with new cans made from bauxite ore and electricity has also produced over 70 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

I added CRI's Containers Wasted counter to my sidebar. You can too - if you know HTML. Click here for the code. That huge number that keeps increasing is the number of bottles and cans wasted in the US this year (not one of those is mine, by the way). I don't know what percentage of that number is aluminum cans but I do know that recycling just one can saves the energy equivalent of one cup of gasoline - enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 3.5 hours. (How many cans do you throw away?)

Answer to quiz:

1. In the US, 20 - 30% of glass bottles are recycled each year
2. 21% of plastic bottles are recycled
3. 48% of Aluminum cans
4. Recycling rates have declined