How the American Way of Life is Destroying the Earth

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I just picked up The Green Consumer, a book by John Elkington, Julia Hailes, and Joel Makower, with Foreword by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's, now owned by Unilever. Originally published in 1988, the material is a bit dated but almost more poignant for it. The following examples are just what I needed to start my day:

 

p. 8:

"How the American Way of Life is Destroying the Earth"

  • Per-person daily household trash produced in Calcutta, India: 1.12 pounds; in New York City: 3.96 pounds
  • Barrels of oil wasted annually because the federal government has not raised efficiency standards for cars by 1 mile per gallon: 420,000
  • Amount of oil the U.S. would have to import to meet present demand if the average fuel efficiency of all cars on US roads averaged 42 MPG: none
  • Pounds of agricultural pesticides applied each year in California: 80 million pounds
  • Portion of the 35,000 pesticides introduced 1945 tested for potential health effects: 10 percent
  • Plastic beverage bottles Americans go through every hour: 2.5 million
  • Styrofoam cups thrown away each year in the U.S.: 25 billion
  • Americans living in areas with levels of air pollutants the federal government considers harmful: 110 million
  • Trees wasted each week by Sunday newspapers not being recycled: 500,000
  • Homes that could be heated by the wood and paper thrown away each year: 5 million homes for 200 years
  • Scrap tires generated by American drivers in 1988: 246.9 million
  • Plastic containers dumped overboard daily by commercial fishing fleets: 640,000
  • Northern fur seals drowned each year by lost plastic fishing net: 500,000
  • Estimated number of sea birds, marine mammals, and fur seals killed each year as a result of eating or being strangled by plastics: 1 million, 100,000, and 50,000, respectively
  • Gallons of water that can be contaminated by a single quart of motor oil: up to 2 million
  • Grazing area required to produce a single all-beef hamburger: 55 square feet

New Zeland gov't invited Rob dunbar (climate scientist - see podcast from Stanford 2007 homecoming speech from whence this information is drawn) to evaluate footprint - NZ farmers evaluating methane productin of 40M sheep and cows. Part of their overall carbon trading strategy.

 

Cement production represents 10% of US carbon emissions (wow - get cement producers onboard)