The outline here shows the amount of four different materials that were used and recycled around the year 1982 until 2010.
In general, we could see that in between four different materials, each one of them has different changes. Some have a major difference while others stay relatively the same in between the time of 1982 to 2010.
In 1982, about 10% of aluminium cans were recycled and as the years progressed, the amount of aluminium cans rapidly increased to almost 50% in around 30 years. Reasons being that perhaps canned food was popular at the time. Both glass containers and paper & cardboard have a similar line graph despite having a 15% recycle rate difference in 1982. Both had a downfall in the year 1990, With glass paper & cardboard containers having 5% lower than in 1986. Though in 1994, paper and cardboard both had a major increase at around 15% and glass containers also had a decent rise of about 10%. Despite being the materials that desperately needed to be recycled, plastics had barely any changes. Between 1986 to 2010, the amount of recycled plastics increased by barely 5% in total. Which is far from enough to be done to save the environment.