Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 7m 1,722 #humanfootprint
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Leaving the Dangerous Human Mark On The Planet
If you think about a human being, from the moment they are born, until the day they die, they are consuming. From the air they breathe, to the water they drink, to the elements and resources they need for survival, a human being needs to use their surroundings for survival. For most of us, we hardly give it a second thought to how much we are actually consuming each day, each week, each month, or each year. When we take something, do we replace it with something? More and more humans are trying to do just that and they are turning to recycling, using things over and over again, without buying new things. They are realizing that they are human and they do need to consume resources in order to survive. After all, this Earth was meant for us to use, but we must share it, not only with other human beings, but our animal counterparts as well, who consume a lot less than humans do.
There is no one to tell human beings that they are consuming too much, but when the resources start to run out or when they actually do run out, they are gone forever. We, as human beings must do our part, as we are consuming more now within the last 50 years and our ever-increasing demand and addiction to energy requires that we consume more. If we continue to consume at the rate we are consuming now, our grand children and great grandchildren will go without many of the resources that we take for granted. Other means of energy must be sought after, such as solar energy, which comes from the sun and is infinite as far as we are concerned, until our sun dies.
Water, an extremely scarce and valuable resource, is supposed to keep over 7 billion humans alive, yet we pollute our drinkable water, and act as if there is still plenty to go around. This Earth is much more limited and delicate than we treat it, and there are no other planets we can inhabit or take resources from. By destroying the Earth, we are ultimately causing our own inevitable extinction. We may not see it in our lifetime, but in our time of thinking only about ourselves, we are killing off our offspring quicker than we realize.
The only way we can overcome this is to stop consuming so much, stop producing more, stop our never-ending demands and need for instant gratification, and start recycling what we already have. We do not have another Earth and once the resources are consumed, there is no way to get more. It is up to us to do something about our very bad habits, which are leaving deadly marks on the planet, and the marks are clear: they are human footprints.
I was watching “The Human Footprint” (2007) on Discovery, I tried to record as much information as possible. This is what we, the average human being (American) consume in our entire lifetime, as individuals. Hence: The Human Footprint. Since this was written, consumption of Americans have probably gone up in a decade.
In regards to sustainability, around 400,000 babies were born worldwide in 2019. These numbers may no longer be reflective of a decade ago, and have likely doubled. Thought you might be interested. The More You Know.
Our Human Footprint
Infancy/childhood
- 3,769 diapers
- 1,898 crude oil used for each individual in childhood
- 715lbs of plastic
- 4 1/2 trees
- if diapers were reusable, washing: 22,455 gallons of water
Serve all of American population: 9.2 million cows
Milk consumption per individual:
- 3 pints of milk
- 14 pints a month
- 368 pints in a year
- 13,056 pints of milk per lifetime
- 26,126 cups of milk consumed in a lifetime
Food
1,740,630,427 lbs of food consumed and added up by all humans per day on Earth
Potatoes:
- 4,043 potatoes eaten in a lifetime per person
- 3500lbs of fresh potatoes
- 6,920lbs of processed potatoes
Meat:
- consumption of 1.7 tons pork in a lifetime
- consumption of 1,426 chickens in a lifetime
Eggs:
- 5 per week
- 21 per month
- 255 per year
- 1.3 tons of eggs in a lifetime
- 19,826 eggs per person per lifetime
- 211 million eggs per day produced by hens
- 77 billion eggs a year
Bread, toast, wheat consumption:
- Wyoming size state devoted to wheat fields in USA
- 55 bread loafs a year
- 4,376 loaves of bread in a lifetime
- 87,520 slices of bread in a lifetime
- Does not include the consumption of hot dog and hamburger buns
- 12,129 hamburger buns consumed in a lifetime
Bananas:
- 11 million air miles to reach us
- 5,067 bananas consumed in a lifetime
- 28 pounds a year
- 1.1 tons in a lifetime
Oranges:
- 12,888 oranges in a lifetime
Trash
Garbage:
- 29,720 lbs or 15 tons of trash (garbage truck load) in a lifetime
- 178,000,000 cans (aluminum) consumed per day across the US
- 43,371 cans (aluminum) of soda consumed in a lifetime
- 3.42 miles of soda cans or 50 football fields w/end zones
- Almost half of the food in the U.S. goes to waste per year – approximately 3,000 pounds per second
- 82% equalling 1.8 million tons of ewaste (various electronics e.g. TVs, cell phones, computers etc) ended up in landfills
- A National Safety Council study estimated about 100 million computers become obsolete within a year
- Electronic waste total approximately 2% of the waste stream in the U.S.
- Despite only representing 5% of the world population, the U.S. generates more waste than any other country in the world. (World Watch Institute)
Recycle:
- Americans recycle enough cans to power 1,118,000 homes for a year
- Every three months, Americans throw enough aluminum in the landfills to build our nation’s entire commercial air fleet
- Average person recycles up to 25,000 aluminum cans in a lifetime
- Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour
- Americans throw away enough office paper each year to build a 12 foot high wall from Seattle to NY (a new wall every year)
- According to a recent Yale University/EPA study, the U.S. recycles less than 22% of its discarded materials
- The U.S. recycling levels have not improved in 20 years despite the billions of dollars spent on recycling competitions, symposiums, awareness campaigns and new sorting technologies
Bathroom
- 28,433 showers in a lifetime (5-minute showers equivalent to leaving the water running for 98 days nonstop, 7 minute showers = 136 days of water running nonstop)
- 25 gallons of water per shower
- 156 toothbrushes
- 389 toothpaste tubes
- 656 soaps
- 178 shampoos
- 39 tubes hairstyle gels
- 1.2 million gallons of water in a lifetime used excluding showers
- same as leaving kitchen tap water on for 62 weeks
- 600,000 miles of sewer lines – enough to wrap around the world 24 times
Clothes
Men, at any given time own:
- 25 t-shirts
- 4-5 pairs of underwear
- 5-10 pairs of socks
- 7 jeans
- $52,972 spent on wardrobe in lifetime
Women, at any given time:
- Between $500 – $1,000 spent on clothes per year
- Over 100 pairs of shoes owned in a lifetime
- 35 pairs of underwear
- 2-3 favorite bras owned
- About $4,000 spent on bras in a lifetime
- 3-4 jeans
- 3-4 dress pants
- 2-3 dress shirts
- 5-7 attractive outfits
- 25 – 50 blouses
- 100 outfits
- Only about 12% of this wardrobe is worn more than once
- 10% of this wardrobe is never worn out in public
- 21% of this wardrobe is never worn at all
- 33% of this wardrobe is too tight
- 24% of this wardrobe is too loose
Feminine Health & Hygiene
- 450 – 500 periods total in a 40-year period or 2,280 to 2,500 days of having a period — roughly 6.25 to 7 years of a woman’s life spent on her period
- Around $20,000 spent on products relating to a woman’s period in a lifetime
- 2-3 Heating pads $50
- 10 Tubes of Acne Medication $100
- 60 boxes of Panty Liners $450
- 500 bars of Chocolate $1,000
- 6,000 Midol capsules $1,200
- 250 – 300 Tampons $2,000
- Birth control at about $25 per month, or $12,000 over a lifetime
- Over 200 pairs of underwear replaced in a lifetime due to staining $1,000
Drinking
Alcohol consumption in lifetime:
- 13,248 beers (beer drinker)
- 942 bottles of wine (wine drinker)
- $25,000 spent on alcohol over a lifetime
House
- Humans Move about 10 times in lifetime
- 64 trees to supply wood for average home
- 14,000 feet of lumber
- Average new homeowner $9,000 spent on furnishing and decorations
- 7 washing machines owned in a lifetime
- 7 air condition units in a lifetime
- 5 refrigerators owned in a lifetime
- 8 microwaves owned in a lifetime
- 10 tv sets owned in a lifetime
- 15 computers owned in a lifetime
- average of 2 television sets within the home
Average American
- Produces 22 tons of carbon dioxide
- 2,000 pounds saved if we lowered our temperatures in house by 2 degrees (more info @ National Geographer)
- Watches television an average of about 4 hours a day
- Equivalent to 183 days straight in a lifetime watching TV
- Equivalent to 6 months straight in a lifetime watching TV
- Will own 12 cars in a lifetime which are replaced roughly every 17 years
- Will drive about 627,000 miles or 25 times around the world in a lifetime
- Use 31,350 gallons of gasoline in a lifetime
- Produces 6 tons of carbon emissions a year
- Produces 360 tons of carbon emissions in a lifetime
- 5,054 newspapers read in a lifetime
- Hospital visits: 263 times in a lifetime
- Consumption of pills: 37,320 in a lifetime
- Average Lifetime: 77 years 9 months
- Waste in a lifetime: 64 tons
USA
- 5% of world population
- 30% of the world’s cars in USA
- Uses a quarter of world’s oil, more oil than any other place in the world
- Uses 10,500,000 barrels of oil a day
- 200 million cars being driven in USA everyday
- 500 – 1000 kWh per household per month
- If all the world was like the USA, 4 planets would be needed to support everyone
- 43 trees to make a lifetime of newspapers for each US citizen
- To make all of the US newspapers for one year: 191,000,000 trees.
- 1000 tons more carbon dioxide a day is released in the air without these trees.
- 13% threatened species living beside us
Each and every human being consumes and takes from this planet without giving very much in return. The lessons we all need to understand is that in our taking, we must continually give back. If humans dedicated themselves to planting one tree each year that they remain alive on this planet, over 450,000,000,000 new trees would be planted, helping to undo much of the damage done by humans. 20 million trees produce 260 million tons of oxygen, while removing 20 milion tons of C02. Trees not only change the environment and better the atmosphere, but create habitats for all animals and insects. We bring nothing into this world and take nothing out of it but we transform it as we live in it, for better or for worse, this is our human footprint.
If you are not able to plant a tree, consider donating to those who can.
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