Throw-Away Society

I know it’s not Earth Day, but I’ve been rereading E.O. Wilson’s The Future of Life recently and just wanted to share a few scary statistics:

• Every three months Americans throw away enogh aluminum to rebuild the country’s entire commercial airline fleet.
• Every year Americans throw away enough disposible diapers that when linked end-to-end would stretch to the moon and back seven times.
• If every citizen of planet earth consumed as much as the average American, we would need four more planet earths to sustain ourselves.

But just so this post isn’t all gloom and doom, here’s an interesting fact about recycling:

The first instance of metal recycling in the USA occurred in 1776 when patriots toppled a statue of King George the III in NYC. The metal was melted down and made into over 42,000 bullets.