HSBC Commit to change
The world's local bankFacts about waste
- The waste produced in the UK in one hour would fill London's Trafalgar Square right to the top of Nelson's Column – a height of 169 feet (52 metres).
- One tonne of recycled newspaper will save 17 trees.
- Waste buried in landfills takes a long time to degrade.
- Orange and banana peels: up to 2 years
- Cigarette butts: 1–5 years
- Wool socks: 1–5 years
- Plastic-coated paper: 5 years
- Plastic bags: 20–1000 years
- Nylon fabric: 30–40 years
- Leather: up to 50 years
- Tin cans: 50 years
- Aluminium cans: 80–100 years
- Glass bottles: 1 million years
- Plastic bottles: indefinitely
- UK businesses throw away over 1.5 million computers every year. Over 90% of these are fully functioning but less than 5% are refurbished for reuse.
- People around the world use enough plastic bags to carpet the entire planet every six months.
- The UK produces 28 million tonnes of household waste per year. This weighs the same as 3.5 million double-decker buses, a queue of which would go around the world 2.5 times.
- Senseless food trade is a major cause of energy waste and CO2 production. For example: in one year US$431,000 worth of Californian almonds were exported from the port of New York City to Italy while US$397,000 worth of Italian almonds were imported through the same port.
- It takes 75,000 trees to print a Sunday Edition of the New York Times.
- Australians use more than six billion plastic bags per year – if these were tied together they would stretch around the world 42 times.
- More than 18 million tonnes of waste end up in landfills each year in Australia. That is 340 times the weight of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
- Friends of the Earth estimates that 80% of waste could actually be recycled. The UK only recycles 17% while Switzerland, Holland and Germany each recycle 50%.
- Recycling one aluminium can can save enough energy to run a TV for three hours.
- There is no limit to the amount of times that aluminium can be recycled.
- The cost to build a paper mill that uses waste paper is 50%-80% less than building one designed to use new pulp.
- An estimated 40% of all life in the sea has been destroyed over the past 25 years, as a result of our pollution.
- More than 800 square miles (2,000 square kilometres) of wildland is lost to development every day.
