Carbon Footprint – Change to Waste Reduction
1. U.S. population is 322,762,018 and we produce around 5 LBS of garbage a day = 230 million tons or over billion pounds a day.
*Makes you think, where does it all go?
2. Plastic can’t disappear completely! That plastic toy you had as a four year-old is still around this earth somewhere.
3. 1,620 bottles of water are consumed every second in the U.S. totaling 140 million water bottles a day.
*45% of bottle water is just tap water bottled and sold to us. Americans send over $11 billion a year on bottled water!
4. Two million plastic bags are used every minute around the world.
*The average American family takes homes almost 1,500 plastic bags shopping a year, only to be used for 30 minutes or less. Less than 5% of plastic bags are recycled in the U.S.
5. Every square mile of the Ocean has over 45,000 pieces of floating plastic in it. *There is more plastic in the Oceans than there is Plankton.
6. Countless wildlife and pets mistake litter for food or shelter and can become entangle, cut, stuck, and even poisoned causing more deaths than hunting.
7. A two-mile stretch of Hi-way yields around 32,000 pieces of garbage.
8. 3.7 million pounds of garbage was cleaned up in one day along 9,000 miles of U.S Shorelines.
*Garbage can make its way to the Oceans all the way from Minnesota.
9. The average office employee in the U.S. discards 1.5 pounds of paper each day. If that paper was recycled it could save 1000’s of trees from being cut down a year.
10. American consumers throw away 87% of goods and materials after a single use.