Fast Facts on Waste at Work

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 about 1.5 million laser cartridges a year, leading to around 1500 tonnes of waste a year – an amount that would cover the Sydney Cricket Ground to a depth of half a metre.
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.
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 a cost of approximately $5 per ream, this adds up to $75 per week or $3900 per year. If half of the paper was printed either double-sided or two pages per sheet, this would save 3.75 reams a week, which is a dollar saving of $18.75 per week. Over the year, the saving is $975, or 25 per cent.
Every tonne of aluminium recycled means:
- 13,300 kilowatts of electricity is saved
- 95 per cent 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 per cent when using recycled aluminium, 85 per cent for copper, 80 per cent for plastics, 74 per cent for steel and 64 per cent for paper. Through re-use and recycling, the energy embodied in waste products is retained and reduces the impact on climate change.

Council has prepared a variety of fact sheets on waste reduction and recycling.