United States Consumption Report
by The sad facts about United States consumption.
The United States of America: home to the land of the brave, the land of the free, and sadly, the land of consumption. Less than 4% of the U.S. forests have been destroyed, and over 40% of the U.S. waterways have become undrinkable. 80% of the world’s forests are gone. In the Amazon rain forest alone, we’re losing over 2,000 trees a minute. We have only 5% of the world’s population, yet we are using over 30% of the world’s resources. If everybody consumed at U.S. rates, we would need three to five planets, but we only have one!
We extract resources to produce everyday products. Once we have extracted enough resources, we start producing everyday products. We combine energy with toxic chemicals to produce toxic contaminated products. The United States alone emits over four billion pounds of pollution into our air and rivers every year.
Image via Wikipedia
Next, the products are distributed. The companies try to make you buy their product so that they can manufacture more products and make even more money! Sometimes large companies even try to make the product break as easily as possible, that way you will have to go and buy a new one, thus giving them more money.
Once you have used the products, they are thrown away. Six months after you buy the products, only 1% of them are still in use. Americans make about 4.5 pounds of trash a day, twice the amount we made thirty years ago. Then the trash is either dumped in a land fill or burned and then dumped in a landfill. We need to stop this continual cycle, or it will end ugly.
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