Solid Waste/Recycling Services

Why Recycle?

RECYCLING SAVES!
Recycling saves money, energy, space and natural resources. It's economical, ecological, easy and effective. Communities from coast to coast are recycling because these savings pay off close to home.

Recycling facts:

• Recycling oil takes half as much energy as refining crude oil.
• Re-refined oil also meets warranty requirements for new autos.
•  Used motor oil is reprocessed into fuel for furnaces, power plants and manufacturing facilities to provide heat and energy.
• The City of Durango and La Plata County both use their used fleet oil in waste oil burners that heat their maintenance shops.  
• Recycling 2 gallons of used oil can generate enough energy to:
• Run the average home for 1 day
• Blow-dry your hair 216 times
• Vacuum a house for 15 months
• Watch television for 180 hours (7½ days straight!)
• To make 2½ quarts of lubricating oil, it takes 42 gallons of high quality crude oil OR 1 gallon of used oil.
• If all the oil from Do-It-Yourself oil changes were recycled, it would be enough motor oil for more than 50 million cars a year. That's a savings of over 1.3 billion barrels of crude oil PER DAY! 
• 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

• Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months. Environmental Defense Fund
• About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is just 28%. Environmental Protection Agency
• Recycling creates 6 times as many jobs as landfilling. Colorado Recycles
• 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
• Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to operate a TV for 3 hours. Eco-Cycle
• If we recycled all of the newspapers printed in the U.S. on a typical Sunday, we would save 550,000 trees--or about 26 million trees per year. California Department of Conservation
• The energy saved each year by steel recycling is equal to the electrical power used by 18 million homes each year - or enough energy to last Los Angeles residents for eight years.
• If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 1,000 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save:
• 373,000 trees
• 1.48 million cubic feet of landfill space

• 155 million gallons of water. Seventh Generation Co.

• The U.S. is 5% of the world's population but uses 25% of its natural resources. Environmental Protection Agency