Facts on the Environment

Isn’t Nature Beautiful?

Can you imagine a world where there are no humans? Every living thing on this planet will be able to live its whole life cycle undisturbed. The land will have luscious forests and animals of all kinds will be roaming freely. The oceans will be teeming with fish and the air will be crisp and clear.

It’s a wonderful thought but very far from today’s reality. The reality is that we are here and everywhere we go we cause destruction – to the environment and to the creatures living there… and eventually ourselves.

How did it ever come to this? It wasn’t our intention but now that we know about it, what have we done to correct our mistakes?

Here are some facts on the environment, just to give you a clearer view of how our senseless actions are affecting everything around us.

• Plastic garbage in the ocean kills as much as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year and countless birds too.
• Rainforest are being cut down at an astonishing rate of 100 acres per minute!
• Each person throws away around 4 pounds of garbage each day.
• 14 billion pounds of trash is dumped in the ocean each year.
• In the US alone, the daily trash generated weighs as much as the Empire State Building!
• 1 in 4 mammals faces the possibility of extinction. 78 of marine mammals are threatened by accidental deaths caused by fishing traps and ingesting of plastic waste.

More: Pollutions from Plastic

• If greenhouse gases continue to rise at the current pace, the average global temperature can increase by as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit in the 21^st century.
• If every living person lived like the average American, we will need 5 Earths to give us enough resources to sustain our way of life.
• The US has 4% of its forests left.
• 27,000 trees are felled each day so we can have toilet paper.
• 84% of household waste can be recycled, but most end up in landfills.
• According to the National Academy for Sciences, there’s an average of 27 oil spills a day all over the world.

More: Paper Waste Facts

There’s still time to make things right. Read about how you help improve the state of our environment. Go to The World Counts: Stories