Community Activities

Environment

Energy

Did You Know...

• Recycling aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy used to make aluminum cans from virgin ore.
• In 2003, Americans recycled 62.6 billion aluminum cans. Those cans, placed end-to-end, could make 171 circles around the earth.
• For each pound of aluminum recovered, Americans save the energy resources needed to generate about 7.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity. That's enough energy saved each year by recycling aluminum to meet the lighting needs of a city the size of Pittsburgh, PA for six years.
• Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.
• Used aluminum cans are recycled and returned to a store shelf as a new can in as few as 60 days. That means a consumer could purchase basically the same recycled aluminum can from a retailer's shelf nearly every 9 weeks or 6 times a year.
• It takes 2 to 5 years for paper to decompose in a landfill.
• It takes 5 years for milk cartons to decompose in a landfill.
• It takes 10 to 20 years for plastic bags to decompose in a landfill.
• It takes 24 to 40 years for leather shoes to decompose in a landfill.
• It takes 50 to 80 years for plastic containers to decompose in a landfill.
• It takes 75 years for disposable diapers to decompose in a landfill.
• It takes 100 years for tin cans to decompose in a landfill.
• It takes 200 to 500 years for aluminum cans to decompose in a landfill.
• Styrofoam never decomposes.
• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run your television for three hours.
• Producing one pound of recycled rubber versus one pound of new rubber requires only 29% of the energy.
• Americans dump the equivalent of more than 21 million shopping bags full of food into landfills every year.
• The junk mail Americans receive in one day could produce enough energy to heat 250,000 homes.
• Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap Texas.
• Recycling paper instead of making it from new material generates 74 percent less air pollution and uses 50 percent less water.
• Over 23 million lbs. of plastic foam peanuts are recycled annually; that's enough to fill up the Empire State Building.
• To produce each week's Sunday newspaper, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
• If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year.
• Only 27% of the newspapers produced in America are recycled.
• A piece of paper can be recycled up to 15 times before the fibers get too short for making paper. After that, it becomes toilet paper, tissue paper and paper toweling.
• Recycling one ton of plastic saves the equivalent of 1,000-2,000 gallons of gasoline.
• It takes 85 20-ounce PET (polyethylene terephthalate) containers to make enough fiberfill for one sleeping bag.
• One pound of newspaper can be recycled to make six cereal boxes, six egg cartons or 2,000 sheets of writing paper.
• It takes 36 two liter bottles to produce one square yard of carpet.
• Recycling waste materials supports about six times as many waste-related jobs as there would be if the same materials were treated as trash.
• Americans throw away enough office and writing paper annually to build a wall 12 feet high stretching from Los Angeles to New York.
• Every year each American household receives an average of 1.5 tree's growth of bulk mail advertising — commonly known as 'junk mail.'
• The average American household generates 15 pounds of hazardous waste a year. Most of it goes into landfills, sewage treatment plants and septic tanks.
• An estimated 1.6 million tons of household hazardous waste exists in the municipal waste stream right now.
• The U.S. Postal Service delivered approximately 63 billion pieces of third-class mail in 1990.
• An estimated 5 million trees were used to produce all of 1990s third-class mail.
• An estimated 10 billion pieces of third-class mail were discarded without being opened.
• Most bottles and jars that you use contain at least 25% recycled material.
• 75% of each tree that is cut down for paper is not used in a paper product.
• 98 tons of various resources are required to make one ton of paper
• By recycling one ton of glass, we save the energy equivalent of nine gallons of fuel oil.
• The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
• Throwing away a single aluminum can, versus recycling it, is like pouring out six ounces of gasoline.
• Last year, Americans recycled enough aluminum cans to conserve the energy equivalent of more than 15 million barrels of oil.
• The national recycling rate of 30 percent saves the equivalent of more than five billion gallons of gasoline, reducing dependence on foreign oil by 114 million barrels.
• According to the EPA, recycling, including composting, diverted 68 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators in 2001, up from 34 million tons in 1990.
• Recycling 35 percent of our trash reduces emissions equivalent to taking 36 million cars of the road.
• More aluminum is turned into drink containers than any other product.
• In 1972, 53 million pounds of aluminum cans were recycled. Today, that amount is exceeded by 1,612 million pounds.
• In 2004, Americans recycled about 1.52 billion pounds of aluminum, which equals the weight of 13 air craft carriers.
• Americans earn about $1 billion a year recycling aluminum cans. A used aluminum can returned to a recycling center is worth about a penny to consumer recyclers.
• Using recycled aluminum beverage cans to produce new cans allows the aluminum can industry to make up to 20 times more cans for the same amount of energy.
• It's estimated that, since 1972, some 18.7 million tons of aluminum have been recycled. These 1,099 billion aluminum cans, placed end-to-end, could stretch to the moon and back 174 times.
• Aluminum cans have amazing strength. Four six-packs (24 cans) can hold a 4,000-pound aluminum-bodied sedan.
• The average employee consumes 2.5 cans of soda each day at work.
• Each year, Americans receive enough money from recycling aluminum cans that every kid in the U.S. could buy two movie tickets.
• The number of cans recycled every 30 seconds equals the number of people who could fill an entire pro football stadium.
• If the 2003 Corvette convertible was on a seesaw, it would take 107,214 used aluminum cans on the other side to balance the car.
• In 2001, Americans bought 351 aluminum beverage cans per person, twice as many as in 1980.
• The average American family recycles 150 six packs of aluminum cans a year.
• The energy saved each year through recycled cans could light the city of Washington, D.C. for 3.7 years.
• All aluminum cans recycled since 1972 would stretch from New York to Los Angeles and back 15,939 times.
• The amount of steel recycled from appliances in 1997 would equal the amount needed to build 88 new baseball stadiums the size of the new BancOne Field in Phoenix, AZ.
• The number of cars recycled in 1997 alone - nearly 13 million - would cause a traffic jam circling the Earth more than one and three quarter times.
• Recycling just one car saves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal and 120 pounds of limestone.
• It takes about 45 seconds to shred the average automobile into fist-sized pieces of steel for recycling.
• The automobile is the most recycled consumer product in the world today.
• You can't make new steel without recycled steel.
• If 2,750 households in your community recycle four aluminum cans a day, they can build a Habitat home for a family in need in just one year.
• Aluminum can be recycled over and over without breaking down. In theory, we have an inexhaustible supply of it in circulation right now. If we recycled all our aluminum, we'd never have to make more.
• The average American discarded fourteen and a half pounds of aluminum just from packaging last year—and almost three pounds of aluminum foil.
• A long time ago, aluminum was a much more valuable metal than gold or silver.
• The aluminum in one single soda can is worth about a cent. Americans threw away millions of cans last year. The American government could pay off a significant portion of its debt with a few years' worth of aluminum cans.
• The aluminum Americans throw away each year is enough to provide the auto industry with all the raw material it needs to build a year's worth of new cars.
• Because our landfills are so full of aluminum cans, some landfills incinerate extra aluminum. This isn't just a huge waste; it also pours toxic metals and gases into the atmosphere.
• By doubling our aluminum recycling rate, we could cut a million tons of pollutants per year out of the atmosphere.
• Recycling aluminum isn't just about collecting cans. You can also recycle old siding, aluminum foil, and even the gutters on your roof. Most recycling depots that take cans will also take these materials.
• Each year, Americans throw away 25 billion Styrofoam cups.
• Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
• In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each, but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills.
• Bottled water costs between $1 and $4 per gallon and 90 percent of the cost is in the bottle, lid and label.
• It takes over 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture a year's supply of bottled water. That's enough oil to fuel 100,000 cars.
• Out of ever $10 spent buying things, $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away.
• Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.
• On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.
• The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.
• The energy saved by recycling 19 billion steel cans each year is the same as Los Angeles' energy requirements for eight years.
• Recycled tin is so pure that it is used to make stannous fluoride, the "cavity fighter" in toothpaste.
• Paper makes up the largest single item in the trash, accounting for 37 percent.
• The volume of glass recycled by Americans in one year would fill New Jersey's Giants Stadium more than three times.
• Textile recycling provides raw materials for upholstery, for filling mattresses, for wadding and other absorbent products, and for the manufacture of felt as well as fibre from which new cloth can be made.
• In one year an estimated seven million tons of clothing and other textiles are thrown away. Only 12 percent are reused or recycled.
• Each year, 352 million pounds of plastic are dumped into the sea.
• More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tinfoil. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
• 3 billion of the 4.7 billion magazines delivered to newsstands each year never reach a reader - enough to circle the earth 20 times.
• 90% of magazines are discarded within a year, yet less than 20% are recycled.
• During World War II when raw materials were scarce, 33% of all paper was recycled. After the war, this number decreased sharply.
• If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A supermarket could use all of them in under an hour. This means in one year, one supermarket goes through 60,500,000 paper bags and 86,500 trees.
• We get 27.8 lbs of air pollution for every ton of new glass produced. Recycling that glass reduces pollution by 14-20%.
• Every day, U.S. papermakers recycled enough paper to fill a train of boxcars that is 15 miles long.

Tell me more!

In past years, Team 2191 has hosted students from local middle schools visit during the build season. These students have participated in both the building and programming of the robot, giving them an opportunity to master the skills needed for high school participation.

Select members of the group have decorated a display case to inform students and staff about the many aspects of our team's functions. In it, we are able to communicate the purpose of the competition and exemplify the multi-faceted program of FIRST. Many students recognize not only the hard work and dedication that goes into building the robot, but also the diversity of the tasked required to maintain a functioning team.

We are able to offer aid to any team that seeks it. We have lent batteries and other materials to fellow competitors. Experienced team members demonstrate enthusiasm to assist teams with testing and adjusting robots.