Eco-Statistics

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Below are some miscellaneous factoids that will probably shock you.  Hopefully enough to inspire you.  If we all do our best to go green, we can change some of the statistics. We can help Mother Earth.

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• 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 of gas used by a car contributes about 19 pounds of CO₂ into the atmosphere.  For a single car driving 1,000 miles 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 110 million Americans live in areas with levels of air pollutants the federal government considers to be harmful.
• Americans 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 throw away 25 billion Styrofoam coffee cups every year, and 2.5 million plastic beverage bottles every hour.
• 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.
• 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 American home uses about 300 gallons of water a day.
• A 1/32" leak in a faucet can waste up to 6,000 gallons of water a month, or 72,000 gallons a year.
• America's refrigerators use about 7 percent of the nation's total electricity consumption--the output of about 25 large power plants.
• By turning the heat down, Americans could save more than 500,000 barrels of oil each day--that's over 21,000,000 gallons.
• A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to two million gallons of fresh water.
• By the year 2000, U.S. businesses will need the equivalent of all the office space in Pittsburgh, PA, to store the paper it uses in just one year.
• Driving an average of 1,000 miles 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.

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