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Waste reduction fast facts: General environment

Garbage and recycling  ›  Recycle at school  ›  Fast facts about waste reduction  ›  General environment

This resource is not exhaustive nor is it all-inclusive, but can be cited and dated from primary and secondary sources. To find out more about the methodology or accuracy, contact the referenced source.

Metro does not validate nor endorse any of these facts.

• Between 1970 and 2000, terrestrial species have declined by 30 percent, marine species have declined by 30 percent, and freshwater species have declined by 50 percent. –World Wildlife Fund, Living Planet Report 2004
  www.panda.org/downloads/general/lpr2004.pdf
• Industry moves, mines, extracts, shovels, burns, wastes, pumps and disposes of four million pounds of material in order to provide one average middle-class American family’s needs for a year. –Natural Capitalism; Paul Hawken, Amory and L. Hunter; Lovin Little Brown & Co.; September 1999
  www.natcap.org/sitepages/pid20.php
• The United States, with less than 5 percent of the global population, uses about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuel resources, burning up nearly 25 percent of the coal, 26 percent of the oil, and 27 percent of the world’s natural gas. –Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2004 Special Focus: The Consumer Society, January 2004,I SBN: 0-393-32539-3
  http://www.metro-region.org/article.cfm?articleID=5562
• For all the world to live as an American or Canadian, we would need two more earths to satisfy everyone, three more still if population should double and 12 earths altogether if worldwide standards of living should double during the next 40 years. –Natural Capitalism; Paul Hawken, Amory and L. Hunter; Lovin Little Brown & Co.; September 1999
  www.natcap.org/sitepages/pid20.php
• The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent. –Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2004 Special Focus: The Consumer Society, January 2004, ISBN: 0-393-32539-3
• As many as 2.8 billion people on the planet struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, and more than one billion people lack reasonable access to safe drinking water. –Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2004 Special Focus: The Consumer Society, January 2004, ISBN: 0-393-32539-3
• Urban sprawl requires more kilometers of pavement and more sewer, water and telephone lines (2.5 times more, in the case of Chicago) to service a given population than compact development. –World Watch Institute, December 1998
  www.worldwatch.org/alerts/981217.html
• Humanity is now consuming over 20 percent more natural resources than the Earth can produce, causing rapid declines in wild animal populations. –World Wildlife Fund, Living Planet Report 2004
• The area of forest required to provide for each U.S. citizen’s annual wood needs is 1.7 acres, compared to the global average of 0.7 acres. –Forest Products Journal, pp. 10-21, January 2001
• At current growth rates, 150 million cars could jam China’s streets by 2015—18 million more than were driven on U.S. streets and highways in 1999. –Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2004 Special Focus: The Consumer Society, January 2004,I SBN: 0-393-32539-3
• Materials use has grown 18-fold in the United States since 1900. Substances such as aluminum and plastic were virtually unknown at the turn of the century. Since that time, aluminum production has climbed more than 3,000-fold, and synthetic chemicals production has increased 1,000-fold since 1930 in the U.S. alone. –World Watch Institute, December 1998
  www.worldwatch.org/alerts/981217.html
• Materials have become more complex this century, drawing from all 92 naturally occurring elements in the periodic table, compared with the 20 or so in use in 1900. –World Watch Institute, December 1998
  www.worldwatch.org/alerts/981217.html
• Cancer, asthma, birth defects, developmental disabilities, autism, endometriosis, infertility and Parkinson's disease are becoming increasingly common: these serious health problems are linked to chemical exposures from air, water and food, homes, schools and workplaces. –World Bank Group, "Toxics and Poverty", 2002
• More than 100,000 new chemical compounds have been developed since the 1930s. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences reports that insufficient information exists for health assessments of 95 percent of chemicals in the environment. –World Watch Institute, December 1998
  www.worldwatch.org/alerts/981217.html
• On average, 18 pounds of pesticides per acre, per year are used on golf courses, compared to 2.7 in agriculture. –Worldwatch Institute, “Matters of Scale: Planet Golf,” March/April 2004
  http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/2004/172/mos
• According to the EPA, mining operations in 2003 released nearly 3 billion pounds, or 45 percent of all toxics released by U.S. industries. –Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elisabeth Royte, Little, Brown and Company, 2005
• The average cruise ship passenger produces 10 gallons of concentrated sewage every day, which is dumped overboard. The cruise ship industry has been fined a combined $33.5 million in recent years for polluting the environment. –Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Industry, Ross Klein, New Society Publishers, November 1, 2002
• Coal-burning power plants are the largest human-caused source of airborne mercury emissions in the United States, accounting for over 40 percent of all human-caused mercury emissions. The EPA has estimated that about one quarter of these emissions are deposited within the U.S. while the remainder enters the global cycle. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Mercury Basic Facts,” 2005
  http://www.epa.gov/mercury/about.htm
• EPA studies of human exposure to air pollutants indicate that indoor air levels of many pollutants may be two to five times, and occasionally more than 100 times, higher than outdoor levels. –Environmental Protection Agency, “The Inside Story: A Guide to Indoor Air Quality,” EPA 402-K-93-007, April 1995
• Lawn and garden equipment (lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chain saws) that run on gasoline currently contribute 16 percent of hydrocarbon emissions and 21 percent of carbon monoxide emissions from mobile sources nationwide. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Reducing Air Pollution From Nonroad Engines," EPA420-F-03-011, April 2003
• The air pollution from cutting grass for an hour with a gasoline-powered lawn mower is about the same as that from a 100-mile automobile ride. –Environmental Science Technology, “Measurement of Regulated and Unregulated Exhaust Emissions from a Lawn Mower with and without an Oxidizing Catalyst: A Comparison of Two Different Fuels,”Christensen, A.; Westerholm, R.; Almen, J.; (Article); 2001; 35 (11); 2166-2170.
  http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es0002565

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