Millions of consumers who recycle every day think that because they recycle their bottles and cans, everyone else is recycling too. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Americans waste (landfill, incinerate, or litter) twice as many beverage containers as we recycle.

In 2006, more than 138 billion beverage bottles and cans were not recycled. Nationwide, that’s about 460 per capita— up from 300 per capita just a decade ago, and this trend of increased wasting is expected to continue.

There is a great environmental cost to replacing billions of wasted bottles and cans with new containers made from virgin materials: in terms of pollution, energy squandered, and habitats disrupted by mining, drilling, and other industrial activities.