What Can I Recycle?
Thrift, saving, and re-use are habits earlier generations of Americans knew well. Recycling is simply a modern version of these character traits, helping us make the best use of our planet's limited natural resources. Recycling your daily newspaper, plastic bottles and other items is a great way to help.
See how the actions you take affect the environment.
Experience MoreWhat can I place in my recycling bin?
Metals
Do you think of your empty soda cans and food cans as a natural resource? They are. The scrap value of the 36 billion aluminum cans Americans discarded in one year alone was about $600 million. Apart from the economic impact, the environmental savings of recycling metal are enormous. Recycling steel and tin cans, for example, saves 74% of the energy used to produce them. A steel mill that uses recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution and mining wastes by about 70%.