THE BAD:
• 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.
• Americans dump 16 tons of sewage into their waters–every minute of every day.
• 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.
• Americans throw away 25 billion Styrofoam coffee cups every year, and 2.5 million plastic beverage bottles every hour.
• 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.
• Each year, 40 million acres of tropical rainforests–an area larger than the state of California–are destroyed through logging or burning.
• U.S. businesses 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.
• A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to two million gallons of fresh water.
• America’s refrigerators use about 7 percent of the nation’s total electricity consumption–the output of about 25 large power plants.
THE GOOD:
• 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.
• By turning the heat down, Americans could save more than 500,000 barrels of oil each day–that’s over 21,000,000 gallons
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