The Human Footprint

I don't normally watch National Geographic, but this special, The Human Footprint, really intrigued me. Since I am so interested in global warming and overconsumption in America, this show was absolutely fascinating, and pretty disturbing as well.

The Human Footprint shows how much an average human being consumes throughout the course of an average lifespan, 77.9 years. The point of the study is to show how much just one person contributes to this earth. When so many people say "I don't know what to do to help this global warming problem," even cutting down on little things could help. If everyone cut back a little, as you will see, we can really make some change and perhaps help this planet that is suffering because of our destruction to its natural environment.

Look at these staggering statstics:

In the course of a lifetime, a human being will consume or use...

-3,796 diapers (1,898 pints of crude oil, 715 lbs of plastic, 4.5 trees)
-13.056 pints of milk
-2.5 tons of beef or 5 average-sized cows
-1.7 tons of pork or 6 150 lb pigs
-2.3 tons of chicken or 1,423 chickens
-1.3 tons of eggs or 19.826 eggs
-9,917 lbs of potatoes or 20,000 potatoes
-4,376 loaves of bread or 87,000 slices
-5,542 hot dogs
-14,598 candy bars or 12 cart fulls (this adds 1,056 lbs to a person)
-11,196 apples
-5,067 bananas
-12,888 oranges
-29,700 lbs of garbage
-43,371 cans of soda



-28,433 showers
-700,000 gallons of water
-156 toothbrushes
-389 tubes of toothpaste
-656 bars of soap
-198 bottles of shampoo
-272 sticks of deoderant
-35 bottles of hair styling gel
-37 bottles of perfume
-50 tubes of lipstick
-1,277,043 gallons of water we will use (equivalent to leaving the water spout on for a year and nine months)
-567,575 gallons of sewage
-64 tons of aluminum and plastic from bottles/cans
-68 lbs of clothes thrown away/year
-48 new pieces of clothes/year
-$1,000 on clothes/year
-$52,972 spent on clothing (men)
-35 billion loads of laundry/year
-560 gallons of water
-13,248 beers
-942 bottles of wine
-5 refrigerators
-7 air conditioners
-10 TVs
-15 computers
-8 microwaves
-7 washing machines
-12.5 years of TV watched
-22,000 kilowatts of electricity from TV watching
-412 books (43 trees)
-5,054 newspapers
-627,000 miles traveled in a lifetime (25 times around the earth)
-31,350 gallons of gas

Other facts:

-Diapers would circle the world 90 times for one baby to use diapers until age 2.5
-Humans eat 1,649,630,427 lbs of food every day
-2,000 cans of soda are opened every second
-500,000 trees just to send out every Sunday's paper
-265 million turkeys killed and eaten on Thanksgiving
-20,000 Christmas trees cut down/year
-30% of the world's cars are in the US



Most of these statistics made me cringe. I'm not surprised, but seeing the statistics are just insane. Look at how much one person impacts the world! We consume so much! It's ridiculous... Check out their website here.

So what do you think of these statistics?