There are 6 billion people on earth.
One billion people live in urban slums (that’s one in six humans, if your math is slow). Of the children born in 2008, one in three will be born in a slum. Typically these areas lack fresh water and sanitation.
~ United Nations Population Fund
There are over 1 billion people without access to fresh water. Approximately 97 percent of all the water on earth is salt water; of the remaining 3 percent of fresh water only .3 percent is found in rivers and lakes. The rest is frozen, for now.
~ World Water Council
There is a dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi that varies in size up to 7,000 square miles. The hypoxic water is due to agricultural and industrial waste that runs off into the Mississippi river and ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico. This area cannot support aquatic life.
~ EPA, December 21, 2007
The North Pacific Gyre is an ocean current that swirls and in doing so collects waste into floating islands of plastic debris. The floating trash is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the Pacific Trash Vortex. The floating landfill is the size of Texas.
~ Greenpeace
An estimated 2 million people die every year due from air pollution.
~ World Health Organization, 2002
Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months.
~ Environmental Defense Fund
About 80 percent of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is just 28 percent.
~ EPA
