Promotions for the future - Eco Facts

Carbon Facts
• The effects of our CO2 production are already showing - the ten hottest years since the 1860's have been in the last 15 years.
• By turning down your central heating thermostat one degree, fuel consumption is cut by as much as 10%, and insulating your attic reduces the amount of energy loss in most houses by up to 20%.
• In September 1992 the ozone hole (caused by CFCs and other pollutants) above the Antarctic was nearly the size of North America - by 2001 the ozone hole was three times larger than North America
• More than 30 million acres of tropical forest are destroyed each year, which means at current rates of destruction there will be no rainforest at all in just 40 years.
• Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have risen by a third since industrial times, and are expected to double in the next hundred years.
• Recycling 1 tonne of paper saves 17 trees, 2 barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for 6 months) and 3.2 cubic meters of landfill space.
• The average European is responsible for nearly 2.5 times as much atmospheric carbon as a Latin American. The concentration of CO2 has increased 25% since the industrial revolution, half of this rise has been in the last 30 years. It is expected to double within decades
• Depending on where you live in the world, the average human can produce up to 22.0 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) each year. That's the equivalent of 30 trees which would need to be planted to offset your personal CO2 contributions. – from growaforest.com

General Waste
• The UK produces more than 434 million tonnes of waste every year. This rate of rubbish generation would fill the Albert Hall in London in less than 2 hours
• The average household in the UK produces more than a tonne of waste every year. Put together this comes to a total of 31 million tonnes per year.
• On average, each person in the UK throws away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks.
• UK households throw away between £250 and £400 of potentially edible food every year.
• How long it takes for rubbish to break down: Organic Material – 6 months, Cotton and Rags – 6 months, PLASTIC – 500 years
• Every year the average dustbin contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3500 showers or 5000 hours of T.V.
• Babies nappies makes up about 2% of the average household rubbish. This is equivalent to the weight of nearly 70,000 double decker buses every year. If lined up front to end, the buses would stretch from London to Edinburgh.
• 1 million tonnes of nappies are thrown away each year , that is 8 million nappies every day. Each child uses a total of 5850 nappies in their lifetime. 1 million tonnes of nappies are thrown
• In one year there would be enough waste to fill dustbins stretching from the Earth to the Moon.

Plastics
• Recycling just one plastic bottle can save enough energy to power a 60W light bulb for 6 hours
• Ordinary plastics do not biodegrade, micro organisms do not break down in the way they do natural materials. So the plastic cup that is thrown away today will be still around for hundreds of years.
• We produce and use twenty times more plastic today than we did 50 years ago.
• Every year an estimated 127.5 billion plastic bags are given away by supermarkets. This represents over 130,000 tonnes of plastic – enough to cover an area the size of London twice with a layer of bags.
• The UK generates some 2.8 million tonnes of plastic waste in the UK each year, this figure is rising by 2% each year.
• Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.
• Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest

Glass
• On average, every family in the UK consumes around 330 glass bottles and jars a year.
• Recycling two bottles saves enough energy to boil water for five cups of tea.

Paper
• About one fifth of the contents of household dustbins consists of paper and card, of which half is newspapers and magazines. This is equivalent to over 4kg of waste paper per household in the UK each week.
• If an average family recycled all of their paper, this would save 3 trees worth of paper every 6 months.
• Each person in the UK uses 15 trees worth of paper every year
• Every year we need a forest the size of Wales to provide all the paper we use in Britain.

Packaging
• Every year each person produces 4 times as much packaging waste as their luggage allowance on a jumbo jet
• Over 60% of the total plastic waste in Western Europe is packaging, which is typically disposed of within one year of sale.

Oil
• 1 litre of oil can pollute 1 million litres of fresh drinking water
• Waste oil from nearly 3 million car oil changes in Britain is not collected. If collected properly, this could meet the annual energy needs of 1.5 million people.

Aluminium Cans
• Recycling aluminium cans saves 95% of the energy used to produce them originally
• Recycling 1 aluminium can saves enough energy to power a television for three hours
• All the aluminium cans sold in the UK would fill 12 million dustbins each year
• We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum cans every year.