POLLUTION AND WASTE

1.Twelve per cent of the world's population living in North America and Western Europe account for over sixty percent of the global consumption of resources, while thirty three percent living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa consume only three percent of the resources.

2.The USA has only five percent of the world's population and yet consumes twenty five percent of the world's energy, thirty three percent of the world's paper and produces over seventy percent of all hazardous wastes in the world!

3.An important quantity that scientist use to measure the consumption of renewable resources of a community is called the 'ecological footprint'. The ecological footprint of a population is the total area of land or sea that the community needs to live in, to generate the energy which it uses and to produce all the crop, meat, wood and other resources that it consumes.

4.After we deduct the deserts, the icecaps, the open oceans and other unproductive spaces, the total productive land and sea available on the Earth is only about 11.4 billion hectares or about twenty five percent of the Earth's surface. If we divide this by six billion, which is the population of the Earth, we get a figure of about 1.9 hectares per person as the global average.

5.What is surprising is that while most countries in Africa and Asia have an ecological footprint of about 1.4 hectares, the ecological footprint for Western Europe is 5 hectare while for North America it is 9.6 hectares! This implies that a North America needs almost seven times as much area to meet her consumption as an Asian or African.

6.The average American uses about three hundred kg of paper in a year while an average Japanese use two hundred and fifty kg annually. In contrast, people in the developing world use only eighteen kg per year. The United Nations estimates that about thirty to forty kg of paper is enough for the literacy and communication needs of one person per year.

7.Paper production alone consumes about one billion trees every year in the USA.

8.The fact is that world consumption of paper has grown by about four hundred percent in the last forty years. Now nearly four billion trees, which is thirty five percent of the total trees cut around the world, are used in the paper industry.

9.Recycling one ton of paper saves about seventeen thirty five foot tall trees, four thousand kilowatts of energy (enough for the needs of an average home for about six months) and also saves about thirty kg of air getting polluted.

10.Aluminium cans use a lot of energy to produce. The amount of energy needed to produce an aluminium can is equal to the amount of energy produced by half a can of petrol!

11.Seventy per cent less energy is needed to produce cans from recycled aluminium than form the ore. The energy saved from recycling one aluminium can will run a television set for over three hours!

12.Americans throw away above eighteen billion disposable diapers a year, enough to stretch to the moon and back seven times. Over a billion trees are used to make disposable diapers every year.

13.North Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

14.Oil spills cause a lot of damage to marine animals. The largest oil spill was caused during the First Gulf War in 1991 when Iraqi forces destroyed oil tankers in Kuwait. this resulted in the spillage of over 900 million liters of oil into the sea.

15.The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio,USA, was so polluted with hazardous wastes from the industry that it caught fire and burned in 1996!

16.By the year 2006, all cars which are being trashed in Europe must be taken back free of charge by their manufacturers and eighty percent of the vehicles must be recycled or reused.

This will save a lot of plastic and metal waste from discarded and old cars from going into the landfills.

17.Producing meat means using a lot more land to produce the grain for the animals: it takes seven kg of grain to produce one kg of beef, four kg of grain for one kg of pork and two kg of grain for one kg of chicken.

18.The plastic that we throw away takes more than five hundred years to decompose while things like paper, cotton and other organic materials take only six months to decompose. Glass takes as astounding one million years to decompose in a landfill!

19.About three hundred million tyres are produced every year in the USA while about two hundred and fifty million tyres are recycled. Discarded tyres are usually recycled by using them in cement kilns as fuel, for road construction and for creating rubber surfaces like sports field and so on.

20.Computers and other consumers electronic items are becoming obsolete within a very short span of time. Between 1997 and 2004, in the USA alone, more than three hundred million computers became obsolete. Each computer monitor contains about two to three kg of lead, an extremely poisonous substance. The circuit boards used in electronic items contain hazardous chemicals and their disposal is a major environmental problem..

21.Lead is also found in old pottery and paint. If lead enters our body, it's effects are disastrous and lead poisoning is frequently fatal.

22.Every year some forty five thousand tons of plastic waste are dumped into the world's oceans. This includes mostly fishing gear, styrofoam cups and plastic bags. As a result, about a million seabirds and over one lack marine mammals are killed every year.

23.In 2004, 3,00,000 volunteers from 88 countries removed nearly four thousand tons of liter from various beaches. Out of over seven million pieces of trash collected, there were more than a million cigarettes!

24.The highest consumption of cigarettes in the world is in Russia; the number of cigarettes smoked per person in Russia in a year is more than two thousand and five hundred! That amounts to almost seven cigarettes per person per day for every man,woman and child in Russia.

25.Every quarter pound of hamburger that is eaten destroys roughly fifty five square feet of rain forest. This is because most of the metal used in hamburgers comes from South America where forests are cleared to raise cattle to be used for meat.

26.Acid rain is caused by sulphur doxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrogen chloride. These gases are released in the burning of fuel in power plants and also by automobiles.

27.Sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are normally not very soluble in atmospheric water and so they are transported great distances before they dissolve in the water and come down as acid rain. For example, ninety percent of the sulphur deposited in Sweden comes from other countries!

28.Every year, over three hundred million printer cartridges are thrown away in the USA. If you think this is a small number, think again-their combined weight is as much as the weight of over thirty thousand elephants!!

29.Recycling a laser printer cartridge saves about two liters of oil.

30.In the USA, cell phones are typically used for about one and a half years before being discarded. It is estimated that this year, about 135 million cell phones, collectively weighing about seventy thousand tons, will find their way into landfills.

31.Even though more than half of all beverages containers-cans or bottles-are recycled, Americans end up trashing over two hundred million bottles of beer and soft drinks every day.

32.Every year, Americans and Canadians use thirty four million Christmas trees.

33.The total weight of the junk mail received by Americans per year is about four million tons. Most of it remains unread and ultimately ends up in landfills.

34.In the developed countries, households gardens use up to 10 times more toxic chemicals per acre than the farmers use on agricultural lands.

35.When we adopt a 'zero waste' frame of mind at school, home and in our everyday lives, we help prevent deforestation, species loss, pollution and other environmental problems. All we have to do is remember and practice the three Rs:

REDUCE,REUSE and RECYCLE.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUIRES DO ASK ME I'LL TRY MY BEST TO ANSWER IT.