1. To produce 1 kilo of plastic produces 6 kilos of carbon dioxide
2. In South Africa discarded plastic bags are called “the national flower” because so many can be seen flapping from fences and caught in bushes.
3. In an attempt to reduce bag litter, some countries have put a levy on them. Ireland’s 15 cent tax on each plastic bag in 2002 is credited with reducing bag use by 90 percent in its first year.
4. In March 2007, Bangladesh banned plastic bags completely after finding out that the 1988 and 1998 floods that submerged two thirds of the country were actually caused by discarded bags plugging up the drainage system.
5. Plastic bags can sit in the landfill for up to 1,000 years before breaking down. The bags' petroleum-based plastic eventually breaks into tiny particles that contaminate soil and waterways and enter the food chain when animals accidentally ingest them. Plastic bags also block gutters and drains, and choke farm animals and marine wildlife. Thousands of marine animals die each year from eating bags mistaken for food.
6. The Great Pacific Ocean “Garbage Patch” is an environmental blight that humanity has given planet earth and the Pacific Ocean. It is growing larger and larger as the days and weeks go by and considered by many environmentalists as the biggest human waste dump in the world! Located in the center of the Northern Pacific Ocean roughly between the 135th degree and 40th degree latitude and longitude the ocean “landfill” is stuck in the vortex of the horse latitudes gyre found there. The field of debris is so large you can see it from the air as you fly to Hawaii. This blight of the modern world is presently under intense study by various scientists, who are trying to determine what to do about the growing danger to aquatic life and the food chain.
Here are some terrible facts about this toxic mass of PLASTIC GARBAGE:
The size of foul field of Trash is 2 times the size of Texas. It is said 1/5th of junk trapped in the “garbage patch” comes from ship dumping and the rest of the trash comes from human land trash. Environmental researchers believe 90% of the trash in the ocean dump is from plastic, which is not bio-degradable. Some environmentalists say there is 3.5 million tons of waste swirling in the Pacific vortex near the beautiful Hawaiian Islands. Thousands of birds and sea-life creatures are dying from eating plastic particles in this huge debris field, because they can not digest the plastic and it dehydrates them or stops their digestive system from functioning. Some of the tiny plastic bits pass into the living systems of marine life and travel up the food chain until it lands on your dinner plate or in your fish sandwich! And, yikes…. Gulp…. you have eaten residual plastic! Perhaps a piece of your plastic grocery bag, water bottle, used condom or plastic chips bag ends up in your stomach. HOPE – Project Kaisei, launched in March of 2009, is trying to assess the possibility of recycling some of the debris floating in the massive Pacific gyre. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_debris
Petroleum fuel (from oil) versus renewable ethanol
1. Henry Ford originally designed the famed Model T Ford to run on alcohol -- he said it was "the fuel of the future". Ethanol has been known as a fuel for many decades. Indeed, when Henry Ford designed the Model T, it was his expectation that ethanol, made from renewable biological materials, would be a major automobile fuel. However, gasoline emerged as the dominant transportation fuel in the early twentieth century because of the ease of operation of gasoline engines with the materials then available for engine construction, a growing supply of cheaper petroleum from oil field discoveries, and intense lobbying by petroleum companies for the federal government to maintain steep alcohol taxes. Many bills proposing a National energy program that made use of Americas vast agricultural resources (for fuel production) were killed by smear campaigns launched by vested petroleum interests. One noteworthy claim put forth by petrol companies was that the U.S. government's plans "robbed taxpayers to make farmers rich". Gasoline had many disadvantages as an automotive resource. The "new" fuel had a lower octane rating than ethanol, was much more toxic (particularly when blended with tetra-ethyl lead and other compounds to enhance octane), generally more dangerous, and contained threatening air pollutants. Petroleum was more likely to explode and burn accidentally, gum would form on storage surfaces and carbon deposits would form in combustion chambers of engines. Pipelines were needed for distribution from "area found" to "area needed". Petroleum was much more physically and chemically diverse than ethanol, necessitating complex refining procedures to ensure the manufacture of a consistent "gasoline" product. However, despite these environmental flaws, fuels made from petroleum have dominated automobile transportation for the past three-quarters of a century. There are two key reasons: First, cost per kilometer of travel has been virtually the sole selection criteria. Second, the large investments made by the oil and auto industries in physical capital, human skills and technology make the entry of a new cost-competitive industry difficult. Until very recently, environmental concerns have been largely ignored. All of that is finally changing as consumers demand fuels such as ethanol, which are much better for the environment and human health
2. Backyard ethanol As with biodiesel, you don't have to be a corporation to make ethanol -- you can make fuel alcohol in your backyard, and many people are doing just that, and running their vehicles on clean-burning alcohol instead of gasoline. It's more equipment-intensive than biodiesel. You need a still, and you need to learn how to ferment beer. You can build your own still, and there's good information available to help you learn what you need to know.
Unnecessary waste
1. Approximately 5 million tons of oil produced in the world each ear ends up in the ocean.
2. 147 million gallons of petrol, each year, vaporize into the air due to loose, damaged or missing gas caps. Keep your fuel in the tank by making sure you screw the cap on tight.
3. There are no consolidated global figures available but to take some examples from the US which proportionately produces a lot of waste:- Each year Americans alone throw away 18 billion disposable diapers. In perspective, this is enough to extend from the earth to the moon and back 7 times. Throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year, enough to circle the earth 436 times. Use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour Trash enough office paper to build a 12-foot wall form Los Angeles to New York City. Toss out enough aluminum cans to rebuild their commercial air fleet every three months. Fill enough garbage trucks each year to stretch from Earth halfway to the moon. And of course, not all trash even makes it to the landfill. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a swirling vortex of waste and debris in the Pacific Ocean, covers an area twice the size of the continental U.S. and is believed to hold almost 100 million tons of garbage.
Where did all the trees go?
1. A single porcupine is known to kill 100 trees in one winter. It uses it's sharp claws to climb a tree, sits on a limb to gnaw away at the bark and twigs and then stuffs them all into its mouth at once. Because of it's liking for bark, the porcupine causes much damage to forests – but we cause much, much more…
2. To produce each week's Sunday newspapers for the US alone, 500,000 trees must be cut down..
3. At least 50 million acres of rainforest are lost every year, totaling an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland combined. More than 50 percent of all living creatures on the earth reside in tropical rainforests, so with rainforest destruction they’re disappearing at a rate of 100 species per day. Experts believe that 5 to 10 percent of tropical rainforest species will become extinct by during the next half-century. They’re also projecting that half of the remaining Amazon rainforest may be destroyed by the year 2030. The World Wildlife Fund concluded that 55 percent of the world’s largest rainforest stands to be severely damaged from agriculture, drought, fire, logging and livestock ranching over the next 22 years. Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink
1. Earth is 2/3 water. but all the fresh water streams only represent one hundredth of one percent.
2. Oxygen-starved dead zones that cannot sustain life now cover an area roughly the size of the state of Oregon. Spanish researchers also recently found that many species die off at oxygen levels well above what is now considered uninhabitable, suggesting that the extent of dead zones in coastal areas is greater than previously known. Dead zones are caused by excess nitrogen from farm fertilizers, factory and vehicle emissions, sewage and other pollution runoff.
3. Less than 1% of the world’s freshwater is readily available for human use. The amount of water that’s safe for us to use is declining sharply due to pollution and contamination. 87% of freshwater resources are used for agriculture, as much of 60% of that is wasted due to inefficient watering systems.
4. With the population boom and global warming, we’re going to be fighting over water by mid-century. In fact, in Asia – where water has always been considered an abundant resource – per capita availability of freshwater has declined by 40%-60% between 1955 and 1990, and most Asian countries are expected to have severe water shortages by 2025.
Bits and pieces
1. One bus carries as many people as 40 cars!
2. Only 1% of China’s 560 million city residents breathe air that is considered safe by the European Union. And, this severe air pollution problem, which has led to cancer becoming China’s leading cause of death, is no longer affecting the Chinese people alone. China’s dirty air is spreading across the globe as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by the country’s many factories and coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain upon South Korea and Japan. The heavy brown clouds of pollution that hover over Asia are now spreading as far as to the west coast of the U.S. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China.
3. The human population on earth has grown more in the last 50 years than it did in the previous 4 million years. It took almost all of human history – until the early 1800s - to reach a global population of 1 billion. Today, we’re at over 6.7 billion and adding an estimated 74 million people to the planet every year. In fact, the United Nations believes that we’ll reach 9 billion by 2050. Such a large population will put a huge strain on already stretched resources, making severe food and water shortages far more likely.
4. One in four mammals is at risk of extinction. Marine mammals in particular face even steeper odds, with one in three threatened. Humans are mostly to blame as we’ve encroached upon their habitats, polluted the earth and hunted far too many of them. The problem is especially bad in Asia, where agricultural expansion and development of infrastructure has led to a staggering statistic: 79 percent of the continent’s primate species face extinction. Across the world, 78 percent of marine mammals are threatened by accidental deaths such as getting caught in fishing nets intended for other species.
5. One unfortunate scientist, Thomas Midgley, Jr was unwittingly responsible for 2 of the most damaging and extensive attacks on the planet’s atmosphere by man, lead additives in petrol and CFC gases used in air conditioning units and aerosol sprays.
a. Put some lead in your petrol! In December 1921 Midgley discovered that the addition of tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) to gasoline prevented internal combustion engines from "knocking". The company dubbed the substance "Ethyl", avoiding all mention of lead in reports and advertising. Oil companies and auto makers, especially GM which owned the patent (filed by Kettering and Midgley), strenuously promoted leaded fuel as an alternative to ethanol or ethanol-blended fuels, on which they could make very little profit.
The subsequent addition of lead to gasoline eventually resulted in the release of huge amounts of lead into the atmosphere, causing serious health problems around the world. Midgley himself had to take a prolonged vacation to cure himself of lead poisoning. "After about a year's work in organic lead," he wrote in January 1923, "I find that my lungs have been affected and that it is necessary to drop all work and get a large supply of fresh air."
Lead pollution from engine exhaust is dispersed into the air and into the vicinity of roads and easily inhaled. Lead is a toxic metal that accumulates and has subtle and insidious neurotoxic effects especially at low exposure levels, such as low IQ and antisocial behavior. It has particularly harmful effects on children. These concerns eventually led to the ban on TEL in automobile gasoline in many countries.
b. The Ozone attack In 1930, General Motors charged Midgley with developing a non-toxic and safe refrigerant for household appliances. He (along with Charles Kettering) discovered dichlorodifluoromethane, a chlorofluorocarbon which he dubbed Freon. CFCs replaced the various toxic or explosive substances previously used as the working fluid in heat pumps and refrigerators. CFCs were also used as propellants in aerosol spray cans, metered dose inhalers (asthma inhalers), and more.
No significant natural sources have ever been identified for these compounds — their presence in the atmosphere is due almost entirely to human manufacture. As mentioned in the ozone cycle overview above, when such ozone-depleting chemicals reach the stratosphere, they are dissociated by ultraviolet light to release chlorine atoms. The chlorine atoms act as a catalyst, and each can break down tens of thousands of ozone molecules before being removed from the stratosphere. Given the longevity of CFC molecules, recovery times are measured in decades. It is calculated that a CFC molecule takes an average of 15 years to go from the ground level up to the upper atmosphere, and it can stay there for about a century, destroying up to one hundred thousand ozone molecules during that time.
Since the ozone layer absorbs UVB ultraviolet light from the Sun, ozone layer depletion is expected to increase surface UVB levels, which could lead to damage, including increases in skin cancer. lead additives in petrol and CFC gases used in air conditioning units and aerosol sprays.
The good news
As early as the late 1940s and early 1950s, Clair Patterson accidentally discovered the pollution caused by TEL in the environment while determining the age of the earth. In the U.S. in 1972, the EPA launched an initiative to phase out leaded gasoline, Ethyl Corp's response to which was to sue the EPA. The EPA won the case, so the TEL phaseout began in 1976 and was completed by 1986. A 1994 study indicated that the concentration of lead in the blood of the U.S. population had dropped 78% from 1976 to 1991 By the year 2000, the TEL industry had moved the major portion of their sales to developing countries and lobbied governments to delay phasing out of the additive.[7] Leaded gasoline was withdrawn entirely from the European Union market on 1 January 2000, although it had been banned much earlier in most member states. It was only recently phased out in China (around 2001). In the United Kingdom a small amount of leaded gasoline ("four star petrol") is still permitted to be manufactured and sold,[13] albeit with a higher rate of fuel duty. In Australia, owners of old cars that run on leaded petrol can buy leaded additives and mix them with octane 98 fuel (premium unleaded). For the entire U.S. population, during and after the TEL phaseout, the mean blood lead level dropped from 13 ?g/dL in 1976 to only 3 ?g/dL in 1991.
Over the course of a 20-year period from when the first widely received report into Ozone depletion was published in 1976, scientific, public and political opinion led to the eventual agreement to phase out CFC’s entirely by 1996. The Antarctic Ozone layer is not expected to recover fully until 2050 or later, however these are two exampleswhere public and political will can be motivated to address an urgent environmental problem.
6. Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak, has lost 80 percent of its ice cap since 1912. Scientists predict that the ice will disappear completely within 15 years.
7. The Dead Sea is 27.5 yards lower – the height of five double-decker buses – than it was 50 years ago.
8. Lake Chad in Africa has shrunk by 95 percent since 1963.
9. Global sea levels are predicted to rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.
10. Global warming currently contributes to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses every year. Those numbers could double by 2030 as global warming accelerates the spread of infectious diseases, increases malnutrition, and creates more heat waves and floods.
11. More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.
