We take a LOT of plastic and glass containers there and other people do as well. They only accept two types of plastic, hdpe and pete, but it's better than nothing... and those are the most common for grocery packaging(milk jugs, soda bottles, etc)
We used to take our steel cans there but eventually started taking them to a metal recycling place that's just around the corner from the transfer station. The metal place pays for metal. We're not raking in tons of money but it's nice to get a little back for our cans and such.
Anyway... here's a report from our town. It shows how many tons of paper/cardboard were recycled in 2010 and the impact that had.
http://www.siloamsprings.com/department ... ycling.php
In short... our town recycled 699.30 tons if paper/cardboard.
AS A RESULT OF YOUR RECYCLING EFFORT YOU SAVED:
11,888 TREES
2,867,130 KWH of energy
4,895,100 Gallons of Water
2,308 Cubic Yards of Landfill
41,958 Pounds of Air Pollution
Our town has a population of around 15,000 give or take. And that is what we saved for 2010. I can also say that not everyone recycles. A lot more people could here.
A LOT of towns out there are much bigger than ours. Imagine if EVERYONE recycled...
Think about those numbers... Think of your own town... think how those numbers would be different if everyone in town recycled... think about those results added to every other town in the country that recycles. It makes a big impact.
A while back I emailed our church to try and convince them to start recycling. I was noticing how many people threw their bulletins right in the trash there every week. I don't know what the numbers are each week but I'd venture to guess that at least 100 bulletins are printed every week(I do believe that is a LOW estimate) and if you count how many are thrown in the trash every week... that's over 5,000 a year. That's a lot of paper and that's not even counting the other scraps of paper and office waste. I was told that my suggestion would be passed along but nothing ever came of it.

I'm thinking that our church could recycle a LOT of paper and other products... and our church is right around the corner from where you drop that stuff off.
And... our town has a LOT of churches. What if they would all implement some sort of recycling program? The impact would be huge.
Some people are too busy (cough cough LAZY) to bother with it. Some don't think it's important... I sure hope that more and more people get involved with recycling. It is far more important than people can see.