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According to the WARM model, Roseville's recycling activities in 2023 reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 5,924 MTCO2E (metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent). What do all these numbers mean? In addition to preventing pollution, an important impact of recycling is that it conserves a huge amount of energy. Making products and packaging from raw materials harvested from nature uses a much larger amount of energy than using recycled materials. Every manufactured item has the energy used to make it "embedded" into it. Recycling takes advantage of that energy, as it is easier and more energy efficient to make a glass bottle from another glass bottle than from raw materials. The WARM model and other calculators measure the difference between recycling all these tons of materials and using them to make new products versus sending them to an incinerator and making replacement products from raw materials. This difference is expressed as the amount of CO2 that was not produced because we did not have to make and use all the energy that would have been needed if we used raw materials. The numbers above help municipalities calculate and track their environmental footprint. For more information about the process of measuring the environmental benefits of waste reduction, visit httys://www.epa.gov/warm. These numbers, however, don't have much meaning to the average person. To help recyclers understand the significance of their actions, the EPA has also developed tools to translate these numbers into equivalent examples that people can more easily understand. • For example, using the figures above, the EPA estimates that Roseville would have had to remove 1,258 gasoline -powered cars from the road for one year to have had the same environmental impact in 2023 as they did by recycling. • Another way to look at it is that the residents of Roseville saved an amount of energy equivalent to 246,840 propane cylinders for backyard barbeques. Although WARM is the most widely peer -reviewed and accepted model, it is considered to have several flaws. Many believe the use of this calculator is conservative, and understates the real impact of waste reduction efforts, but it offers a conservative starting place to measure our impacts and work towards our goals. Even with these conservative calculations, the impact of Roseville's recycling program proves to be quite significant. Page 19 of 69