Recycling Savings

The tool multiplies your yearly container count by the deposit refund you pick: $0.05 for a standard US deposit, $0.10 as used in Michigan, Oregon, and Australia, or $0.25 as in the German Pfand system. With 15 cans, 10 plastic bottles, and 5 glass bottles a week at $0.05, that is about $78 a year.

Per item, this tool credits a glass bottle with 0.15 kg of CO2, an aluminum can with 0.1 kg, and a plastic bottle with 0.06 kg. Paper is counted by weight at 3.5 kg of CO2 per kilogram, so recycling 2 kg of paper a week outweighs all the containers in the default setup.

The tool credits 0.4 kWh for each aluminum can, against 0.15 kWh for a plastic bottle and 0.05 kWh for a glass bottle. Aluminum leads because making it from raw ore takes far more energy than melting used cans. At 15 cans a week, that is about 312 kWh a year.

The calculator assumes 7 gallons of water saved for every kilogram of paper or cardboard you recycle. At 2 kg a week that comes to about 728 gallons a year. Water savings apply only to paper in this tool, not to cans, plastic bottles, or glass.

Laptop hours turn your energy savings into something familiar. The tool assumes a laptop draws about 65 watts, so one kilowatt-hour runs it for roughly 15 hours. Saving 403 kWh a year, the default result, equals about 6,000 hours of laptop use.

It is an estimate based on fixed per-item averages, not a measurement of your local recycling system. Real savings depend on item size, how the material is processed, and how much is rejected as contaminated. Use it to see which habits count most, and check your local deposit scheme for refund values.