ReCommunity Report Touts Economic, Environmental Benefit Of Michigan Recycling
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- ReCommunity, a recycling and recovery company that works with communities throughout Michigan, announced on Monday's Earth Day holiday the overall impact of its recycling efforts for 2012.
"Earth Day marks a perfect opportunity for us to showcase our commitment to forward-thinking communities in Michigan, and to celebrate our partner communities' recycling efforts, which helped create more jobs and a better future throughout Michigan," ReCommunity CEO James Devlin said.
The report showed that Michigan residents helped produce 236,674 tons of recyclable materials in 2012.
Included were the following:
* 62,361,124 aluminum cans, containing enough aluminum to build 13 jumbo jet airliners
* 536,025,019 plastic bottles, the equivalent of saving 13,399,628 gallons of oil
* 35,848,462,365 sheets of paper, the equivalent of 3,022,989 trees
* 137,248,865 glass bottles. Recycling them saved enough energy to power 32,902 computers for a week
The report showed that the recovering of that 236,674 tons of recyclable materials created 473 jobs. And it also prevented the release of 686,843 metric tons of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases prevented, which equates to removing 125,795 cars from the road a year, and saved 304,295 cubic yards of landfill space saved, the size of 22,154 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
"By definition, sustainability is all-encompassing, including environmental, economic and social benefits to Michigan," said Kerrin O'Brien, Michigan Recycling Coalition executive director. "Our recycling efforts have enabled us to generate additional revenue, create new jobs and reduce our carbon footprint."
Michigan residents can download a copy of the report at http://www.recommunity.com/asr for fun comparisons equating the amount of recycled material to the amount of trees and oil saved, jobs created and more.
