MASCA NCG Sydney 2009

Green facts

Currently, only 11 per cent of office paper is recycled in Australia - one of the worst rates in the developed world.

The average office worker throws away 50 kilograms of high-grade recyclable paper a year .

A 240-litre wheelie bin can contain up to 10,000 sheets of A4 paper.

Each tonne of paper dumped into landfill occupies approximately one cubic metre of increasingly-valuable space.

A typical office tower’s waste contains 55 per cent paper.

Australians use around 1.5 million laser cartridges a year, leading to around 1500 tonnes of waste – an amount that would cover the Sydney Cricket Ground to a depth of half a metre, every year.

Steel is 100 per cent recyclable. It can be recycled over and over again without reducing the quality of the end product.

Glass can be recycled indefinitely; hundreds of times; thousands of times; even millions of times.
Each tonne of recycled paper saves:
  • three trees
  • 2.5 barrels of oil
  • four cubic metres of landfill
  • 31,780 litres of water

If an office uses 15 reams of paper per week, at athe cost of approximately $5 per ream, this adds upequates to $75 per week or $3900 per year. If half of the paper wasere printed either double-sided or two pages per sheet, this would save 3.75 reams aper week, which is a dollar savingequates to $18.75 per week. Over the year, the saving is $975, or 25%.
Every tonne of aluminium recycled means:
  • 13,300 kilowatts of electricity is saved
  • 95% less air pollution is produced
  • four tonnes of chemical product is conserved

Recycling resources that have already entered the human economy uses much less energy than mining and manufacturing new materials. There is an energy saving of 95% when using recycled aluminium, 85% for copper, 80% for plastics, 74% for steel and 64% for paper. Through re-use and recycling, the energy embodied in waste products is retained and thereby slows the potential for climate change.


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///NCG:SYD 2009///