1. It is estimated that 17 trees are cut down for every ton of non-recycled paper.
(source: Global Stewards www.globalstewards.org/lunch.html)

2. “(Americans) use 2,200 [napkins] a year, per person, on average six a day. So if we all give up one napkin a day, we could save billions of paper waste from going to landfills” (As quoted by Elizabeth Rogers, co-author of The Green Book on the Oprah Winfrey Show, April 20, 2007)

3. The average school aged child generates an estimated 67 pounds of lunchbox waste per year. With on average 25 million children carrying lunch to school daily, that means 3.5 billion pounds of lunchbox garbage is created in America each school year. (source: www.lunchopolis.com)

4. Americans use 4 million plastic bottles every hour—yet only 1 bottle out of 4 is recycled.
(source www.wastefreelunches.org)

5. Americans throw away about 10% of the food they buy at the supermarket. This results in dumping the equivalent of more than 21 million shopping bags full of food into landfills each year.
(source www.wastefreelunches.org)

6. Approximately 12 % of the food served as part of the National School Lunch Program is wasted, resulting in an estimated direct economic loss of $600 million.
(source: US Department of Agriculture, 2002)

7. How long does it take these items to decompose in landfills?
(source: www.wastefreelunches.org)

• Glass bottles/jars: 1 million years
• Aluminum cans: 80-100 years
• Plastic bags: 10-20 years
• Plastic coated paper: 5 years
• Orange and banana peels: 2-5 weeks
• Newspaper: 2-4 weeks

8. Recycling one aluminum can saves the amount of energy to light one 100 watt bulb for 20 hours or run a TV for 3 hours. (source: Raven Recycling Society, Canada)

9. In North America, we make enough garbage every day to fill 70,000 garbage trucks. Lined up bumper to bumper, over a year, they would stretch halfway to the moon!
(source: Waste Free Lunch Challenge Sample Announcements)

10. Waste from packaging accounts for more than 30 percent of all the waste generated each year.
(source: thermapod.ca)

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