Here’s some eco-facts from Eco-deals:
Did you know…
17/10/12 12:29 PM
- New Zealander’s throw away 2.5 million tonnes of waste per week.
- By recycling 1 glass jar, you save enough energy to power 10 energy saving light bulbs for an hour.
- Tissue takes 3 months to break down.
- We throw away 83 kilograms of used packaging per person per year.
- For every tonne of paper we recycle 13 trees & 5,000 litres of water is saved.
- NZ’s use more than 400 million cans each year – of which aluminium & steel cans are 100% recyclable.
- On average every kiwi uses around 155 plastic bags each year.
- For every one aluminium can that we recycle, it saves enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours.
- We only recycle 58% of packaging that is currently used.
- New Zealand throws out $750 million worth of food every year. This ends up in landfill and rots away giving off greenhouse gas methane into the air.
- If you choose laundry powders that are phosphate free you help reduce blue green algae in our waterways.
- One of the biggest environmental benefits you can do is to recycle your clothes to either a charity shop or onto other families. For every 1kg of clothing which is recycled, it saves 6,000 litres of water consumption.
- Just over half of all litter in NZ is paper and a quarter is plastic from discarded packaging, so an easy step to keep NZ Clean and Green is not to litter and to place it in recycling bins. This will also save plastic bottles, food packaging and cigarette butts polluting our waterways.
- Resource: Ministry of Environment
- Over 100,000 marine animals die every year because of plastic bags.
- That nearly 80% of debris in the ocean comes from land based sources – Like Humans
- That a child uses 4,000 to 5,000 nappies during the first three years of life
- That there are over 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean
- Cotton is considered the world’s ‘dirtiest’ crop due to its heavy use of insecticides. Cotton covers 2.5% of the worlds cultivated land yet uses 16% of the world’s insecticides, more than any other single crop. http://www.ota.com/organic/environment/cotton_environment.html