Here are some things that you may or may not have known about the environment. ok, some of them are fun but some of them are scary. What did you expect??

1. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours.
2. During the time it takes you to read this sentence, 50,000 12-ounce aluminum cans are made.
3. An aluminum can may be recycled ad infinitum (forever!).
4. We consume over 80 trillion aluminum cans every year.
5. The world's tallest tree is a coast redwood in California, measuring more than 360 feet or 110 meters.
6. The world's oldest trees are 4,600 year old Bristlecone pines in the USA.
7. Every day, American businesses generate enough paper to circle the earth 20 times!
8. Each year, Americans throw away 25 trillion Styrofoam cups.
9. Only 1% of the world's water supply is usable, 97% are the oceans and 2% is frozen (for now).
10. Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots (just checking that you're still paying attention!).
11. Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees (about the same for more major papers' Sunday editions).
12. On average, ONE supermarket goes through 60,500,000 paper bags per year!
13. An automatic dishwasher uses less hot water than doing dishes by hand, an average of six gallons less per cycle, or over 2,000 gallons per year.
14. The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
15. Every time you open the refrigerator door, up to 30 percent of the cold air can escape.
16. Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour, most of which are thrown away!
17. Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
18. A modern glass bottle takes 4000 years or more to decompose.
19. About one-third of an average landfill is made up of packaging material.
20. The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste. We toss out two billion plastic razors, a million and a half tons of paper towels, and 12 billion disposable diapers annually.
21. More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tinfoil. All that foil is recyclable!
22. Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.
23. If you walk a mile along an average US highway, you will see, on average about 1,457 pieces of litter (yuck!).
24. Consumer Reports tested disposable mops and found that they can cost $115+ a year, compared with $50 for a traditional sponge mop with replacement heads and cleanser (so get rid of that Swiffer!).
25. You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV (ok, now you can go take a nap).

Want to reduce your impact? Or clean up a local beach or stream? Check out our Clean Up Action Guide for tips on how to live a lower impact lifestyle.

Already going things to lessen your impact? Tell us about it!

These facts were taken from various sites, too numerous to list, but the figures kept popping up pretty consistently.

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