This tid-bit about catalog mailings comes courtesy of Elizabeth Route from her fun book titled “Garbage Land – On The Secret Trail Of Trash”
“In 2001, American companies sent out seventeen billion of them – fifty-nine for every man, woman and child in the United States – weighing a total of 7.2 billion pounds.”
Hello?…yes,… I’d like to buy a new forest please?
I think this person’s heart was in the right place, but I have to question the act, have to wonder where the pins and the paper will end up.
For every 100 pounds of goods produced, at least 3,200 pounds of waste are created.
Producing one cubic yard of concrete takes about 1,700,000 BTUs or 500,000 watts of energy. Once those 500 kilowatts have been embedded in the final product it really tends to stay put for a very long time.
You could have yourself some big math fun if you multiply that number by the annual 7 billion yard global production figure I learned about in the posting titled “Concrete” from 6/18/’09.
I have no idea who these poor people are, but I’ve been driving by this road side shrine about once a week for a couple years now and finally decided to stop and look. It got me thinking that if every site of a fatal car crash had one of these reminders, maybe people would slow the hell down and pay better attention when they drive.
Maybe.
Motor vehicle accidents killed 37,313 people in America last year.
I found a dark passenger in my salsa the other day. Wish I could have moved it into a piece of cheese and served it with a pear on a bed of greens.
Alas, out it went.
A recent study done at the University of Arizona at Tuscon found that as much as 50 percent of the food grown in America is never consumed and goes to waste.
Incidentally, this was the view out my kitchen window this morning…
The coldest temperature ever recorded on earth was -129 degrees (F) in the Antarctic in 1983.
I think it might be that cold here in Minnesota today.