Eco-Statistics

• The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.
• 99.5 percent of all fresh water on Earth is in icecaps and glaciers.
• Each gallon ( 4 litres) of gas/petrol used by a car contributes about 19 pounds/4.09 kgs of CO₂ into the atmosphere.  For a single car driving 1,000 miles/1610 kms a month, that adds up to 120 tons of CO₂ a year.
• A single polystyrene (Styrofoam) cup contains one billion billion molecules of CFCs--that's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.
• Once a CFC atom reaches the ozone layer, it can take over 100 years before it breaks up and becomes harmless.
• About 610 million people live in areas with levels of air pollutants the federal government considers to be harmful.
• Americans alone dump 16 tons of sewage into their waters--every minute of every day.
• Although water covers two-thirds of the surface of the Earth, all the fresh water in lakes, streams, and rivers represents only one-hundredth of the Earth's total water.
• Each year, 1 million sea birds, 100,000 marine mammals, and 50,000 fur seals are killed as the result of eating or being strangled in plastic.
• A plant called the rosy periwinkle, which grows in the rainforests of Madagascar, has been used to make a drug that can cure some kinds of cancer.
• Americans, one of the biggest polluters, throw away 25 billion Styrofoam coffee cups every year, and 2.5 million plastic beverage bottles every hour.
• North Americans throw away enough glass bottles and jars to fill the 1,350-foot twin towers of New York's World Trade Center every two weeks.
• North Americans throw away about 40 billion soft drink cans and bottles every year.  Placed end to end, they would reach to the moon and back nearly 20 times.
• Eighty-four percent of a typical household's waste--including food scraps, yard waste, paper, cardboard, cans, and bottles--can be recycled.
• Using recycled paper for one print run of the Sunday edition of the New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
• If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25 million trees a year.
• Each year, 40 million acres of tropical rainforests--an area larger than the state of California--are destroyed through logging or burning.
• Only 10 percent of the 35,000 pesticides introduced since 1945 have been tested for their effects on people.
• It takes only one-twentieth as much raw materials to grow grains, fruits, and vegetables as it does to raise animals for meat.
• The typical  home uses about 300 gallons/1200 litres of water a day.
• A 1/32" leak in a faucet can waste up to 6,000 gallons/24,000 litres of water a month, or 72,000 gallons/288,000 litres a year.
• Home refrigerators use about 7 percent of the nation's total electricity consumption--the output of about 18% of  large power plants.
• By turning the heat down, Americans alone could save more than 500,000 barrels of oil each day--that's over 21,000,000 gallons.
• A single quart/.95 litres of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to two million gallons/8 million litres of fresh water.
• Driving an average of 1,000 miles/1610 kms a month produces about 120 tons of carbon dioxide a year.
• If all the cars on U.S. roads had properly inflated tires, it would save nearly 2 billion gallons of gasoline a year.