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.

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GLOBAL WARMING AND THE OZONE LAYER

1.The sun gives us heat and light. The heat warms the surface of the Earth during the day. The Earth, in turn, radiates the heat back into the atmosphere. Most of the radiated heat escapes the atmosphere but some of it's reflected back because of certain 'greenhouse gases' in the atmosphere. This leads to a gradual increase in the Earth's overall temperature.

2.This Greenhouse Effect is just like the process that takes place inside your car when it is parked in the sun on a hot day. The heat that is trapped inside the car makes it much hotter inside than outside. The glass panes prevent all the heat radiated inside the car from escaping.

3.The main greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide but others like methane(the compound in CNG or Compressed Natural Gas), nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs also contribute to the greenhouse effect.

4.Burning of fossil fuels produces energy which we use, but also produces carbon dioxide which contributes to the greenhouse effect.

5.In a year, an average car emits five tons of carbon dioxide into the air. Multiply this by the number of automobiles in the USA alone (about one hundred and twenty million) and you will realize the amount of pollution caused only by cars.

6.The total number of miles driven by cars and other vehicles in the western  industrialized countries in 1985 was 2.5 trillion miles! If you don't know how much that is, it is 2.5 followed by twelve  zeros or almost half a light year!

7. In the year 2002, the average carbon emission per person in America was seventeen times that in India- in the USA, carbon emission was 5.2 tons per person, while in India it was 0.3 tons per person.

8.Of all the fossil fuels, coal produces the most greenhouse gases on burning, while natural gas produces the least. That is why vehicles powered by CNG, or Compressed Natural Gas, are relatively pollution free.

9.If nothing is done about the greenhouse effect, average temperature across the world could increase by 1.5-4.5*C in about thirty years. And more devastatingly, the rise would be more near the poles than near the tropics. This increase in temperature, called global warming, will have very tragic  consequences for the Earth and for all of us.

10.storms and hurricanes will become more frequent and stronger as the oceans become warmer and lose more water by evaporation. There will be droughts and heat waves causing a lot of loss of life.

11.Sea levels will rise by an estimated twenty to fifty  centimeters by the year 2050. This means coastal areas and rivers estuaries could go under water, causing great devastation. Bangladesh and the Nile delta, two areas under risk, have high population densities.

12.If the sea levels continue to rise, most of the coral islands in the Indian Ocean will disappear under the sea.

13.Global warming has also caused Arctic temperatures to rise sharply. Siberia and Alaska are already 2-3*C warmer now than they were in the 1950s. The extent of ice around the North Pole has shrunk by about twenty percent in the past 30 years.

14.Though warmer temperatures may be more productive for fisheries and oil exploration, their effect on animal habitat could be devastating. For instance, polar bears could become extinct if the summer ice cover disappears.

15.Every Antarctic spring, a 'hole' appears over  Antarctica, which results in the destruction of over seventy percent of the ozone over the Antarctic.

16.Ozone is a molecule, made up of three oxygen molecules, which acts as a shield that protects the Earth from the harmful  ultraviolet rays of the sun. Overexposure to ultraviolet rays can cause skin cancer in humans and is also harmful for animals, especially marine life like plankton.

17.The ozone layer extends in the stratosphere, which is the region of the atmosphere extending from about ten kilometers to fifty kilometers above sea level.

18.The main reason for the  thinning of the ozone layer is the use of CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons. These are chemicals used for cooling in the air-conditioners and refrigerators.

19.In 1987, many nations of the world adopted the Montreal protocol to phase out the use of CFCs. Now, most nations have either stopped or drastically reduced the use of CFCs in refrigeration.

20.Volcanic eruptions send out large amounts of sulphur dioxide and volcanic ash into the atmosphere. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 gave out enough ash into the atmosphere to lower temperatures around the globe for the next two years.

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ENERGY AND RESOURCES

1.The Earth's surface receives enough energy from the sun every minute to meet a whole year's    demand for the entire Earth! The amount of sunlight hitting the Earth's surface each year can  supply nearly thirty six thousand times the amount of energy currently provided by the total oil consumption in the world.

2.Fossil fuels account for more than ninety percent of the World's energy supply.

3.Coal provides almost twenty seven percent of the world's energy requirements. Over forty percent of the world's electricity is made from coal.

4.Fossil fuels are natural substances made deep in the Earth from the remains of ancient plants and animals. The heat and pressure in the Earth, over time converts the decomposing remains into fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.

5.Oil has has been used for over five thousand years by humans. The ancient  Sumerian's and Babylonian's used crude oil collected from seeps on the Euphrates River in modern Iraq. A seep is a place where oil leaks up from below. Ancient Egyptians used oil on wounds and to provide lighting.

6.Natural gas is made up of methane, a gas which is compound of carbon and hydrogen. It was first discovered about eight thousand years ago in Iran, where natural gas seeped up from the ground.

7.The natural gas seeps probably provided the fuel for the  eternal fires' of the ancient Persian fire-worshipers.

8.Natural gas is usually found underground near petroleum reserves. It is pumped up from there and travels in pipelines to storage areas. Natural gas usually has no  odor color and is lighter than air. Before it is sent to the pipelines, it is mixed with a chemical that gives a strong odor, almost like that of rotten eggs. This makes it easy to detect a leak.

9.The most abundant element in Earth is oxygen, which makes up a massive forty six percent of it. The most abundant metal in the Earth is aluminium which makes up about eight percent of it.

10.One kilogram of uranium fuel can supply as much energy as does the burning of about hundred tons of coal. Nuclear power plants generate spent fuel which is radioactive and hazardous. Disposal of the spent fuel is one of the major outstanding problems in using nuclear power.

11.Offshore oil rigs like the ones at Bombay High are among the biggest threats to marine life. Offshore drilling destroys reefs and coastal wetlands.

12.Over it's lifetime, a single oil rig can dump more than ninety thousand tons of chemicals and metal into the ocean. The air pollution caused by one oil rig is as much as that caused by seven thousand cars driving about seventy five kilometers a day!

13.Nuclear radiations is very dangerous because it is causes the cells in our body to mutate,i.e., the genetic material in the cell, the DNA, gets altered. This can cause cancer and lead to death.

14.The first people to switch from burning coal to solar energy for heating their houses were the Romans about two thousand years ago! This is the first known use of solar energy in cities.

15.Solar energy is among the cleanest sources of renewable energy. Sunlight can be used to generate electricity, provide hot water and to heat and light buildings.

16.Solar cells or  photo-voltaic cells convert sunlight into electricity. The cell consists of a special material which can do this. Several of these are arranged in modules to provide electricity for a building. They are of great use in remote areas where laying power cables is expensive.

17.Solar energy is also used for heating water. The rays of the sun heat up the water running through tubes in the collector, a large box with a glass cover.

18.Wind energy is actually a form of solar energy. Wind is formed from the heating and cooling of the atmosphere, which causes air and air layers to rise and fall and move over each other. This movement results in wind currents.

19.A wind energy system transforms the moving energy of the wind into mechanical or electrical energy. You must have seen photographs of windmills-they are normally used to pump water or to grind grain.

20.The wind energy system can also provide electricity by using the energy of the wind to run an electrical generator. It is especially suited for regions where there are high wind speeds.Large wind energy farms can generate enough electricity for small remote communities.

21.Both solar and wind energy are clean energies because they do not create any waste products in their generation. Although they are more expensive, they can be used in remote locations where providing access to the regular electrical supply is difficult and expensive.

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DESERTS AND BAND DEGRADATION

1.One of the major environmental problems facing the world right now is desertification-more and more of the world's land is being turned into the deserts. These new deserts are not hot and sandy like the Thar Desert in Rajasthan but are basically areas where the soil has become useless for growing crops.

2.Some estimates suggest that over thirty five percent of the Earth's land surface risks becoming a desert. Every year, about six million hectares of agricultural land becomes a desert. Even the largest desert, the Sahara, is supposed to be advancing southwards at the rate of thirty kilometers per year.

3.Deserts are advancing and taking over the land at a very rapid rate in some parts of the world. In Mali, the desert has taken over about two hundred and twenty miles in as a few as twenty years. This can be stopped by developing tree-planting projects, having better agriculture and managing the land better.

4.By the year 2000, about three million sq kilometers of extra desert was created. This land had been providing twenty percent of the world's food supplies-enough for over eight hundred and fifty million people.

5.Global warming will increase the amount of land which could be classified as useless for agriculture. By 2008, in Africa alone, the amount of this type of land could increase by 90 million hectares, an area four times the size of Britain!

6.Some of the major reasons for degradation of the soil are over-cultivation using chemical  fertilizers, over-grazing of pastures and cutting down of trees.

7.The mining of metals causes a lot of sedimentation and other chemicals to go into the ground and also into the water system. For instance, mercury and cyanide used to separate gold and copper from rock make their way into the air and water. These chemicals are very poisonous and could cause a lot of damage.

8.Lead and zinc mines used by the Romans in Wales, two thousand years ago, are still a source of pollution for the groundwater in the area.

9.In the USA, forty one percent of all insecticides are used on corn. Of these eighty percent are used to treat a pest that could be controlled simply by rotating the corn for one year with any other crop.

10.In 2003, a staggering thirty six percent of the total food grain production in the world was used for animal feed! In the USA, about sixty five percent of the grain production (mostly corn) is fed to livestock.

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WATER

1.The average worldwide use of water per person is around six hundred and fifty cubic meters per year. But the average water usage in North America is one thousand and nine hundred cubic meters, while it is two hundred and fifty cubic meters in Africa. One cubic meter is one thousand liters or about 40 normal sized buckets.

2.Nearly ninety seven percent of all the world's water is salty or otherwise undrinkable. Another two percent is locked in ice caps and glaciers. That leaves one percent for all our needs.

3.Approximately, ten  liters of water are required to manufacture a liter of gasoline, one thousand liters of water are required to grow one kilogram of potatoes and an astounding two lac and ninety five thousand liters of water are required to produce nine hundred kilogram of paper!

4.Almost seventy percent of the available freshwater in the world is used for agriculture. It takes almost one to three cubic meters of water to produce one kilogram of rice.

5.Water enters the atmosphere by a process known as evaporation, and then by condensation forms clouds. Finally, through precipitation, the water falls back down to Earth. This cycle, called the  hydro-logic cycle repeats itself endlessly.

6.A drop of water will usually spend nine days in the hydro-logic cycle but once it falls, it can spend many years before getting into the cycle again.

7.The hydro-logic cycle uses more energy in a day than humanity has created or used throughout it's entire history.

8.The area of the inland Aral sea in central Asia decreased by sixty percent between 1960 and 2000 while it's salinity (the amount of salt in the water) increased by three hundred and eighty percent.

9. Excessive use of groundwater through tube wells and pumps has led to a situation where use of groundwater exceeds natural replenishment by at least one hundred and sixty billion cubic meters a year.

10.1.1 billion people lack access to improved water supply and 2.4 billion to improved sanitation. Those who lack adequate and affordable water supply are the poorest in society.

11.There are now about forty five thousand large dams in operation in the world. The total area submerged by these dams is more than four lac square kilometers! About twenty percent of the world's freshwater species are either extinct or endangered.

12. About forty to eighty million people have been displaced by dams around the world. These people have been forced to give up their traditional habitats and to relocate to less productive lands.

13.Besides the impact on people, large dams have led to loss of forests, wildlife habitat and also aquatic life. Mini-hydro power  plants are proving to be far cheaper to build and have a minimum impact on the  environment.

14.Almost twenty three thousand million liters of waste water is generated in India per day out of which only about six thousand million liters is treated. This means that about seventeen thousand liters of waste water is dumped into our rivers every day.

15.Pollution of the oceans is also increasing as land-based factories and urban societies deposit their wastes into the sea. The hazardous chemicals deposited in the water enter the marine food chain and as they travel up the food chain, their concentrations build up gradually to dangerous levels.

16.A devastating example of this effect was the Minimata Bay disaster in Japan where a factory was discharging waste containing mercury in low concentrations into the sea. By the time the mercury reached the fish, it had reached toxic levels. As result of this, about seven hundred people died from mercury poisoning and many thousands were taken ill.

17.River pollution is another major concern because most of the drinking water on Earth comes from the rivers. With an increase in the use of chemical  fertilizers, the concentrations of nitrate and phosphates in the river increase as the agricultural waste flows into the river.

18.Algae use these chemicals to multiply and grow rapidly, creating a green layer on the surface. This tremendous growth of algae is called eutrophication. When the algae die, they provide food for bacteria whose number increase explosively. The huge numbers of bacteria use up all the oxygen in the water thus causing the death of many aquatic animals.

19.About forty percent of the world's four hundred million children of school-going age are infected with intestinal from poor sanitation and hygiene. This is responsible for more than two million deaths per year.

20.Water-related diseases are a growing human tragedy, killing more than five million people each year-ten times the number of people killed in wars. About 2.3 billion people suffer from diseases linked to dirty water. About sixty percent of all infant mortality worldwide is linked to infectious and parasitic diseases, most of them are water related.

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SPECIES

1.There are an estimated five to thirty million species of living organisms on our planet but only about two million have been described. Though nobody knows for certain, about forty to hundred species are believed to become extinct every singled day.

2.There are about three times as many species of insects as of all the other animals put together. Only about seven lac of the insect species are described and named as yet.

3.Of all the species identified on Earth, there are only about four thousand mammals and nine thousand birds, while there are around a million insects. Out of these million insect species,a third are beetles. In fact, the number of kinds of beetles is more than the number of plant species!

4.Of the roughly two million species classified to date, about twelve thousand species of plants and animals are known to be endangered or face a high risk of extinction in the near future.

5.Since the year 1600, species extinction began to occur at fifty to hundred times the average estimated normal rate. It is now expected to rise to between thousand and ten thousand times the normal rate.

6.Today, more than thirty one thousand plant and animal species face extinction.

7.By the mid-seventeenth century, human population was about four hundred and fifty million and seven animal species were extinct. By the mid-eighteenth century, human population became five hundred and fifty million and eleven more species were extinct. By 1850, we numbered about nine hundred million and twenty seven animal species were extinct.

Now we are about six thousand million humans and in this century we have lost about sixty eight  animal species. Out of these, sixty four species disappeared between 1900 and 1960, Which means conservation is helping. But the number of species dangerously close to extinction is still very large.

8.In the history of the Earth, there have been five periods of mass extinctions as  recognized by the scientists. During these mass extinctions, a large number of the species on Earth have become extinct. The most massive extinction occurred about two hundred and fifty million years ago when about eighty percent of the species on earth died out.

9.The most well-known extinction happened about sixty five million years ago when it is believed that an asteroid hit the Earth, throwing up so much dust in the atmosphere that is led to the death of about seventy percent of the species, including the dinosaurs.

10.Vultures in India are endangered due to a mystery virus and also due to shrinking nesting sites. Increased air traffic also threatens vultures which are nature's scavengers and natural rodent controllers.

11.Seven out of the thirteen great whale species are still endangered or vulnerable after decades of protection.

12.The major causes of danger to the whales are collisions with ships and entanglement in fishing gear, intensive oil and gas development in their feeding grounds and other hazards like toxic contamination.

13.The giant panda still remains an endangered species after decades of conservation efforts. This peaceful, bamboo-eating member of the bear family faces a number of threats. It's forest habitat, in the mountainous area of southwest China, is fragmented and the giant panda populations are small and isolated from each other. Meanwhile, poaching remains an ever present threat. There are an estimated one thousand and six hundred giant pandas in the wild.

14.Both the African and Asian elephants are in danger. They are illegally hunted for there ivory, and are being forced out of their habitats by the logging and clearing of forests for farming.

15.The tiger is also endangered. In the past century, we have lost three of eight tiger

subspecies. The Bali, Caspian and Javan tigers are extinct, and the South China tiger is endangered. The tiger in India faces danger from poachers and the loss of forests.

16.Strange as it may sound today, rhinoceroses once roamed throughout Eurasia and Africa, and were known to early Europeans who depicted them in cave paintings. Now, very few survive outside protected sanctuaries like the one in Kaziranga in Assam. Kaziranga is a rare success story in conservation.

17.Most of the ape species are found in Africa and in areas civil wars are raging. This makes their conservation extremely difficult. One of the major dangers facing the Africans apes is the sale of their meat. This was used by the tribes in the forest areas till recently but it's sale has now become a major commercial  enterprise.

18.Many endangered orangutans in Indonesia are facing a triple-edged tragedy-immediate death by fire caused by illegal loggers; death from poachers if they escape the fires; or death by starvation because the fruit trees on which they rely will take several years to recover.

19.Six of the seven species of marine turtles are listed as endangered or critically endangered, and the outlook is increasingly grim. The major cause of their decline are getting trapped in the nets and long-lines of fishing fleets, pollution and diseases. This means fewer and fewer turtles are living long enough to reproduce, and hence, their numbers are declining rapidly.

20.Desert locusts periodically invade parts of northern Africa and cause a lot of destruction. A typical locusts swarm has millions of insects and covers several  kilometers.

21.The locust is very destructive; a ton of locusts can eat the same amount of food in a day as two thousand and five hundred humans. Adult locusts can fly over two hundred kilometers in one day. In 2004, in Mauritania alone, they destroyed eighty percent of the crops.

22.Every year, during the winter months of the Northern Hemisphere, the Arctic tern flies eighteen kilometers south, from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle! This way it catches both the  Arctic and the Antarctic summers.

23.Pigeons navigate by using the magnetic field of the Earth while sparrows use certain stars to navigate.

24.The American turkey vulture is a very useful bird. It helps oil pipeline engineers in tracing leaks from underground oil pipelines!

The leaking oil smells like vultures food and the birds cluster around the spot where the pipeline is leaking, showing the engineers where to dig!

25.Polar bears are so well insulated that they have to deliberately move slowly so that they don't get overheated!

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FOREST

1.Our planet Earth was formed in the solar system around 4.5 billion year ago. The oldest fossils found on the earth are about 3.5 billion years old and are bacterial microfossils.

2.The oldest known living thing on Earth is a tree, 4,700 years old, which is located in the USA.

It was growing when the Egyptians built the pyramids.

3.An area of forest, the size of a football field, is being destroyed every second on earth.

4.In 2004, an area of about 26,000 sq. km of the Amazon  rain-forest   was destroyed. This is about the size of Belgium! 

5. Rainforest's  cover only 7% of the land area an Earth but contain more than 50% of the trees.

In fact, 1 hectare of the   rain-forest may contain more than 600 species of trees, while all the forests of the USA and Canada together, contain only about 700 species.

6.More than half of the total number of species on Earth live in tropical rain-forest. 

7.Madagascar is home to a rain-forest where 60% of it's twelve thousand different plant species are unique to that island.

8.In peninsular Malaysia, more tree species are found in it's one hundred twenty five acres of tropical forests than in entire North America.

9.The   rainforest's in Indonesia and Malaysia are home to the largest flower in the world-the giant rafflesia-which weighs up to seven kg and has petals which span almost 1  metre. The plant gives out the smell of rotting flesh which attracts certain flies that than help pollination.

10. Some species of trees produce natural anti-freeze chemicals which keep them from freezing in temperatures up to -40  degree  Celsius!

11.A thirty meter tree with two lac leaves can suck up forty three thousand liters of water from the earth  and breathe it into the air in just one growing season.

12.Only plants produce enough new oxygen to support life on Earth. In one year, an average tree inhales twelve kg of carbon dioxide and exhales enough oxygen to keep a family of four breathing for a year.

13.One acre of trees can absorb about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide from the air in one year.

14.To lock up the eight billion tons of carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) released into the atmosphere each year, would require planting a forest four times the area of USA.

15.Just three trees planted around an average-sized home can lower the air-conditioning bill by up-to fifty percent.

16. Rain-forests generate more than forty percent of the world's oxygen.

17.About thirty percent of the carbon spewed out into the atmosphere comes directly from the continued burning of the  rainforest's. this carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide leads to the greenhouse effect.

18.At least 10% of all the medicines are made either wholly or in part from plants!

19.The demand of herbal medicine has been growing at the rate of about 10% every year for the pat decade or so in the West. Most of the plants used for these medicines are harvested from the wild, which has led scientists to believe that about five thousand plant species may face the risk of extinction. Among the threatened plants are tetu lakha, a tree found in southern India which is used for anti cancer drugs in Europe and an Indian root called saw-wart which is used in the cure of skin disorders.

20.The National Cancer Institute of the USA has identified about 3000 species of plants that have anti-cancer properties. Out of these, over seventy percent are from the tropics, including the rosy periwinkle from Madagascar which is used to treat leukaemia in children.

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