Most containers are a little over a foot tall and occupy about half a cubic foot.
But if you laid these containers end to end, they would line the route from Miami to Seattle, across to Boston, and back again to Miami. And furthermore, most of these containers end up in landfills, taking up valuable space, or are improperly dumped or incinerated. But there is an alternative. In 2000, almost one third of these containers, more than 7million pounds of plastic, were collected in the U.S. to be recycled into a variety of useful products. That's one big step closer to a cleaner environment.