BY THE NUMBERS
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Pssst! There’s even more information under this very informative and fascinating infographic!
ONE
Number of new bottles created by recycling one bottle (Glass is 100% recyclable).
174,000,000
Total number of bottles and jars we recycled in 2019
FOUR
Number of hours that recycling one glass bottle can power a 100w light bulb.
160
Number of Ripple Glass recycle bins across Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska & Arkansas.
200
Number of area businesses that recycle their glass with Ripple.
714
Number of recycled bottles it takes to create an entire attic’s worth of fiberglass insulation.
43,500
Number of tons of glass saved from landfills by Ripple Glass last year. Since 2009, we’ve kept over 200,000 tons of glass out of landfills across the region.
EVEN MORE REASONS TO RECYCLE
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Container glass is 100% recyclable, can be recycled endlessly, and is a primary ingredient in fiberglass insulation and new glass containers.
Burying perfectly good glass in the landfill wastes all the material, energy, and labor that went into making it.
Using recycled glass produces 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than creating new glass (or fiberglass) from raw materials.
Every ton of glass that’s recycled results in more than one ton of raw materials saved. That’s 1,300 lbs. of sand, 410 lbs. of soda ash, 380 lbs. of limestone, and 150 lbs. of feldspar.
Recycling just one glass bottle saves enough electricity to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. (Imagine how long it would light a compact fluorescent!)
A six-pack of recycled beer bottles produces enough fiberglass insulation to fill a standard wall cavity.
Kansas Citians consume approximately 80,000 tons of container glass each year. In the past, because of the difficulty and inconvenience, only about 5% was recycled. Today, we recycle nearly 20% of our community’s glass. We still have a long way to go. Nationally, the average recycling rate is over 30% and climbing; in many places in the world, it’s north of 90%!
Glass isn’t collected in most area curbside recycling programs, and for good reason. When mixed with other recyclables, broken glass degrades and contaminates those materials, causing them to be “downcycled” into lower quality products.