EarthxSimpleTruths

1. Pack your lunch in a reusable container

2. Bring your own shopping bag

3. Carry a reusable water bottle and coffee mug

4. Use green cleaning products

5. Turn down your water heater temperature

6. Check the tire pressure of your car tires

7. Convert lights to CFL or LED

8. Buy food in season and local

9. Eliminate the use of plastic straws

10. Skip plastic produce bags

11. Store leftovers in glass jars

12. Hang dry clothes instead of using a dryer

13. Go meatless one day per week 

14. Eliminate paper towels and use cloths instead 

15. Mulch your garden to save water 

16. Opt for paperless billing 

17. Use cold water when washing clothes 

18. Reduce shower time by 1 minute 

19. Install programmable thermostat 

20. Install a water savings shower head 

21. Eliminate use of disposable plastic cutlery 

22. Compost at home 

23. Recycle at home 

24. Recycle old electronics 

25. Carpool or take alternative transportation 

• Americans toss out two billion plastic razors, a million and a half tons of paper towels, and 12 billion disposable diapers each year.

• Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1 million sea creatures every year.

• About 1/3rd of an average landfill is made up of packaging material.

• According to the United Nations Environment Programme, there are approximately 46,000 pieces of plastic floating on every square mile of the world’s oceans.

• At other sites in the Southeast, coal ash ponds were built out into rivers, making them vulnerable to spills or dam collapses.

• The slow-motion coal slurry spill totaled 27 billion gallons, more than 100 times the size of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

• “Gallatin is in many ways the worst site we’ve seen,” said Frank Holleman, a senior lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

• Every major river in the Southeast has at least one coal ash pond.

• In California, 80% of all beverage containers are recycled and 50 million beverage containers are recycled every day, that’s 18 billion beverage containers are recycled per year.

• By controlling insect populations, bats contribute $23 billion every year in agricultural and human health savings every year.

• The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.

• Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour, most of which are thrown away.

• Each year, Americans throw away 25 trillion Styrofoam cups.

• Every day, American businesses generate enough paper to circle the earth 20 times!

• Currently 4 per cent of global oil production goes into plastic.
• Not only does their method (University of Bath) bypass fossil fuels, but the resulting material is transparent, strong and biodegradable.

• A sugar – and carbon dioxide – based substitute for the plastic polycarbonate (used for spectacles lenses, DVDs and greenhouses).

• The rest accumulates in landfills or the natural environment.

• The Amount of plastic entering the oceans is expected to more than double within 10 years.

• More than 100 million tons of coal ash is produced every year, one of the nation’s largest and most vexing streams of toxic waste. The hazardous dust and sludge — containing arsenic, mercury, lead and other heavy metals — fill more than a thousand landfills and bodies of water in nearly every state, threatening air, land, water and human health.

• 1 million and constantly increasing Artic lakes release methane, 25 times stronger GHG than carbon.

• The current national average of homes powered by a MW of solar photovoltaics is 164.

• Artificial light, in widespread use in the U.S. only since the thirties, disrupts animals’ circadian rhythms.

• The world’s oldest trees are 4,600 year old Bristlecone pines in the United States.

• Over 480 billion plastic bottles were sold in 2016 – that’s more than 60 bottles for each person on the planet.

• Scientists are increasingly finding deposits of plastic at the bottom of the oceans, even as far down as the 10km-deep Mariana Trench in the Pacific.

• Around 300 million tons of plastics are produced annually.

• Only a third of recyclable plastic used by consumers is recycled.

• There are over five trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans.

• The trees in the city of Dallas are collectively worth $9 billion?

• Despite their soft and fluffy structure, feathers are composed almost entirely of keratin a tough protein also found in animal hooves and horns.

• Fabric uses 50 per cent less energy than producing polyester, the plastic most widely used in clothing , from scratch.

• Plastics can also be used as fuel, with new technologies allowing us to efficiently convert them into diesel and gasoline.

• The US Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has developed a replacement for the thin plastic films used in food packaging, made from the milk protein casein.

• Recycling steel requires 60% less energy than producing steel from iron ore.

• Steel is the most recycled material in the United States. On average, the U.S. processes enough ferrous scrap daily, by weight, to build 25 Eiffel Towers every day of the year.

• A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf in as little as 60 days!

• If all aluminum scrap processed in the United States were used solely to produce soda cans, the lined-up cans would stretch 25 million miles – the distance from Earth to Venus.

• Over the last two decades, monarch butterfly populations have declined by nearly 90 percent.

• U.S. buildings consume 72% of the nation’s electricity and generate 47% of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

• According to Tony Lovell of Soil Carbon Australia, if land is grazed properly, a ranching pasture can contain more carbon than a tropical rain forest.

• It takes 500 to 1,000 years to create an inch of soil! Why so long? Soil is generally derived from rock, which has to be broken down by weathering and physical processes that take years and years to undergo.

• Did you know buildings account for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.?

• The towers for wind turbines are typically 260-320 feet tall. Blades, made of composites of wood, fiberglass, resin, and carbon, can be up to 260 feet long and weight 6-10 tons each. Tip speeds can reach 200 mph.

• The 2012 state water plan — the state’s strategy for meeting water needs — estimated that Texas would face a shortfall of 2.7 trillion gallons of water a year by 2060, and that filling the gap would take an estimated $53 billion in new infrastructure.

• Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months.

• Each year Americans alone throw away 18 billion disposable diapers. In perspective, this is enough to extend from the Earth to the moon and back 7 times.

• At least 50 million acres of rainforest are lost every year, an area equal to the size of England, Wales, and Scotland combined.

• If the entire world lived like the average American, we would need 5 planets to provide enough resources.
• Recycling one ton of paper saves 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.

• Since 1990, Americans have recycled nearly one billion tons of recovered paper.

• One in four mammals is currently at risk of extinction across the globe.

• The human population has grown more in the last 50 years than it did in the previous 4 million.

• One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person.

• Approximately 84% of all household waste can be recycled.

• Every day in the United States we produce enough trash to equal the weight of the Empire State Building. That’s 365,000 tons of garbage.

• Most American families throw away about 88 pounds of plastic every year.

• Each person in the United States throws away approximately 4 pounds of garbage per day.

• An aluminum can may be endlessly recycled forever!
• It will take old fishing line 600 years to biodegrade naturally.

• Approximately 20 million people across the United States celebrated the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970. Today, more than 1 billion people around the world take part in the event.

• It will take an aluminum can 200 years to biodegrade naturally.

• It will take a plastic bottle 450 years to biodegrade naturally.

• Switch to e-billing. In the U.S., paper products make up the largest percentage of municipal solid waste, and hard copy bills alone generate almost 2 million tons of CO2.

• Change a bulb. Replacing one regular lightbulb with a compact fluorescent light can save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide per year.

• Plant a tree. An average tree can absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.

• Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 7,000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space and 4,100 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

• The average U.S. office worker goes through 10,000 sheets of copy paper per year. Print on both sides and in draft mode whenever possible!

• Using cold water can save up to 80% of the energy required to wash clothes.

• Ivory coast is losing its forest at a faster rate than any other African Country – less tan 4% of the Country is covered in rainforest.

• Refrigerators and freezer units account for 1/6 of a home’s energy use. Select energy-efficient models when buying replacements.

• Artificial lighting accounts for 44% of electricity use in office buildings. Make it a habit to turn off the lights when you’re leaving any room for 15 minutes or more and use natural light when you can.

• Today’s dishwashers are about 95% more energy-efficient than those bought in 1972 – your old dishwasher may be costing you more in energy bills than it would take to buy a new one.

• Chemicals called “neonics” are the most widely used class of insecticides and are also highly toxic to bees and threaten the survival of this critical and threatened species.

• Researchers estimate SEA TURTLE bycatch at 8.5 million or more, from 1990 to 2008, for the 3 major types of fisheries worldwide.

• Researchers have found that bycatch is the most serious threat to all sea turtle species, most of which are now either vulnerable or endangered.

• Hundreds of thousands of SEABIRDS are also killed when they become entangled in fishing nets or caught on long line hooks when they dive for bait.

• Some methods of fishing such as trawling and long-lining results in bycatch rates of 50% or more. The unwanted animals are tossed back into the water dead or dying.

• SHRIMP TRAWL FISHERIES ARE THE SINGLE GREATEST SOURCEOF BYCATCH, accounting for over 27 % of total estimated discards or an estimated 11 million tonnes of discarded fish every year, while producing only 2% of all seafood.
• For every 1 kilogram of shrimp, 3 to 15 kilograms of unwanted creatures die.

• Longline fishing bycatch rates are as high as 50% of non-target species.

• Each year, longline fishing, kills over 300,000 seabirds, including 100,000 albatrosses.

• Fishing is one of the world’s most wasteful and destructive industries. Every year, more than seven million tons of so-called “by-catch”, (perhaps more accurately described as “by-kill”) is inadvertently caught and wantonly destroyed; including over 300,000 sea animals such as non-target fish species, sea turtles, dolphins, whales, sharks, albatrosses and other sea birds. Every year 7.3 million tons of marine life is caught unintentionally by the fishing industry just to be callously thrown back dead, considered an acceptable loss in the industrial pursuit for profit.

• “People are always astounded when I tell them that every other breathe you take comes from the ocean, ” say Heather Koldewey, who conducts public education programmes with ZSL. At school we learn early on that trees are really important for providing oxygen but people don’t learn that the rest of it comes from the ocean.”

• Deciduous trees shed their leaves annually, and when planted on the western and southern sides of a home, these trees can block the sun from entering the home during the hottest times of days, reducing the need to lower the theromostat on air conditioners. When trees shed their leaves in the late fall, sunlight can make its way into the home, potentially reducing heating costs.

• Every year, ocean, “by catch” destroys
  • 300,000 marine mammals
  • 10,000 birds, turtles
  • 20 million tons+ of animals discarded in industrial fishing.”

• Monarch populations have plummeted to just 10% of their recent annual average thanks to the widespread use of weed-killers like “Round-Up” that destroy milkweed, a native plant and sole source of food for monarch butterfly larvae.

• 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.
• If you walk a mile along an average US highway, you will spot an average of 1,457 pieces of litter.

• The slurry released in that spill, which has been called the largest environmental disaster of its kind, buried 300 acres of land in toxic sludge. That sludge was taken to an unlined landfill in Alabama.

• In 2008, an ash pond dike at its Kingston Fossil Plant in eastern Tennessee collapsed, releasing just over a billion gallons of coal ash water into the Emory River, which flows into two other rivers, including the Tennessee.

• The Gallatin site is pockmarked with ponds that serve as storage for millions of tons of coal ash slurry. As at other sites in the region, these ponds were built on top of karst, porous limestone prone to cracks and sinkholes that can let poisonous ash seep into groundwater and threaten drinking water — in this case, possibly affecting more than a million people.

• Even though coal use is declining in the United States, it is still the second-biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, and coal ash is one of the largest waste streams in the country.

• The plant is among the Tennessee Valley Authority’s fleet of power stations, which have used fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewable sources like hydropower to bring reliable electricity to parts of seven states across the Southeast. The authority, created in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, provides 99.7 percent of Tennessee’s electricity.

• A new rule regulating the monitoring, safe storage and disposal of coal ash went into effect in 2015.

• There are now 41,415 species of animals and plants on the IUCN Red List, the foremost authority in threatened and endangered species. 16,306 of those species are threatened with extinction.

• An automatic dishwasher typically uses less hot water than doing dishes by hand. They use an average of 6 gallons less per cycle, or over 2,000 gallons per year.

• Every time you open the refrigerator door, up to 30% of the cold air can escape.

• On average, one supermarket goes through 60.5 million paper bags per year.

• Only 1% of the world’s water supply is usable, 97% are the oceans, and 2% is frozen.

• 40 per cent of the plastic we produce is going into single-use items, such as a cotton buds, drinking straws, carrier bags and plastic forks which have a long life following disposal.

• Enormous quantities of feathers are produced as a by-product of the poultry industry, and they are generally treated as waste.

• Not only are theses films biodegradable, sustainable and edible, they are also far better at preventing food spoilage than plastic. 

• Texas power plants lead the nation in emissions of smog forming gases, carbon pollution, mercury, and selenium. Texas is second in the emission of sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain and haze.

• If Texas were a nation it would be the seventh largest emitter of carbon in the U.S.

• Land along the Texas coast is sinking and the seas are rising, leading to rapid erosion. Annual erosion rates can run as high as 35 to 40 feet near the Louisiana border and 10 to 15 feet on South Padre and Galveston Island.

• In 1900, a hurricane in the Gulf Coast killed over 8,000 people on Galveston Island. This is, to this day, the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

• The Texas Medical Center in Houston is the largest medical complex in the world. The center has 7.2 million visits per year.

• Aransas Wildlife Refuge in Texas is the winter home of North America’s only remaining flock of whooping cranes.

• The average homeowner may be able to save $600 a year on their electricity bill by leasing solar panels and up to $1,217 a year if they buy.

• The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trails was America’s first birding trail project and remains one of the best, featuring 308 distinct sites.

• In the United States, 69% of people support placing limits on the emissions of greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. 71% percent of people in China, 77% of people in Nigeria, and 88% of people in Brazil also support limits.

• A diesel car can be made to run on vegetable oil with some modifications!.

• Turn your thermostat down 2 degrees in the summer and up 2 degrees in the winter to save around 2,000 lbs of carbon per year.

• In 2013, 84% of Texans said they believed global warming has been happening and 76% said that the government should limit gas emissions from U.S. businesses.

• In New York, soot pollution from buildings has fallen by more than 50% since 2011 in the city, preventing an estimated annual 800 deaths and 2,000 hospital visits.

• According to NOAA, in March 2015 the global monthly average for carbon dioxide hit 400.83 parts per million. That is the first month in modern records that the entire globe broke 400 ppm, reaching levels that haven’t been seen in about 2 million years.

• 67% of Americans support carbon rules, even if this means higher utility bills.

• Pushed by the burning of coal, oil and gas, global carbon dioxide is 18 percent higher than it was in 1980, when NOAA first calculated a worldwide average. In 35 years, carbon dioxide levels rose 61 ppm. In pre-human times, it took about 6,000 years for CO2 to rise about 80 ppm.

• The average water footprint per calorie for beef is 20 times larger than for cereals and starchy roots.

• Vegetarian proteins like soy requires 216 gallons of water per pound grown.

• A dozen eggs requires 636 gallons of water to grow.

• The water used to produce ten hamburgers is the same amount of water that one person uses to shower for an entire year. Ten hamburgers equals one year of showers.

• It takes 2,500 gallons of water to grow one pound of beef.

• Temperatures in Antarctica rose 5.4 degrees in the last half-century, much faster than the average rise for the rest of the planet.

• 2014 has surpassed 2010 as the hottest year in recorded history, with average surface temperatures the highest they’ve been since at least 1880.

• Solar is the fastest-growing job market in the United States, growing at nearly twice the rate as the rest of the nation’s economy. The industry now employs nearly 143,000 in the U.S. a growth of more than 50% since 2010.

• Every hour, enough sunshine strikes Earth’s surface to satisfy global energy consumption needs for an entire year. Only 10 square miles of Earth’s surface would need to be covered with panels to capture it all.

• There’s been an 80% drop in the price of solar energy since 2008 and, according to a phenomenon called Swanson’s Law, the price of solar will continue to drop 20% with each doubling of cumulative shipped volume.

• The Antarctica ice sheet has lost 130 billion tons of ice per year over the last decade.

• In a survey about climate change, respondents in the United States, Australia, and Russia, all among the top carbon polluters per capita, were substantially less alarmed about the problem than their counterparts in India, Kenya, and Mexico.

• Turn your engine off at red lights! Idling for 10 seconds consumes more fuel than re-starting your engine.

• Demographers project that Dallas will continue to add 1 million people per decade for the next 30 years.

• More than 1 billion people in 192 countries took part in the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day in 2012.

• An estimated 1 in 10 Americans took part in the first Earth Day, observed across the country on April 22, 1970.

• The world has warmed 1.5 degrees celsius or 2.8 degrees fahrenheit over the past 250 years.

• Texas now counts 12,800 megawatts of wind energy capacity – at times enough to generate a quarter of the electricity on the grid.

• Harsh weather subtracted half a percentage point from growth in the first quarter of 2015, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 37 economists conducted from March 30 to April 1.

• While agriculture consumes 80% of the water in the state of California, it only represents 2% of California’s total GDP.

• It requires 800 gallons of water to grow one pound of pork.

• Crickets require only 1 gallon of water per pound grown. It is an edible insect and a nutritionally complete food, replete with fiber, Omega-3 fatty acids, protein, and other vitamins and minerals.

• Walnuts consume 4.9 gallons of water apiece during production.

• One gallon of water goes into each almond grown and in California 10% of all water goes to the almond industry. The water used each year to grow almonds is equivalent to three years of water for the city of Los Angeles.

• The tire industry consumes 70% of all natural rubber grown.

• Of an estimated total 700 million tons of aluminum produced in the world since commercial manufacturing began in the 1880s, about 75% is still in productive use as secondary raw material.

• The demand for a more diverse diet that includes animal protein such as meat and milk products requires more land to produce.

• Recycling one car saves more than 2,500 lbs. of iron ore, 1,400 lbs. of coal, and 120 lbs. of limestone.

• In 2012, the United States domestically recycled aluminum cans saved the energy equivalent to 19 million barrels of gasoline – enough to fuel more than 1.7 million vehicles on the road for one year.

• Each year, Americans generate approximately 300 million scrap tires. Luckily, today more than 90% of scrap tires are recycled and reused annually!

• One ton of mobile phones can contain 300 grams of gold, compared to an average ton of gold ore, which contains only five grams of gold.

• The volume of water in the atmosphere at any one time is about 3,100 cubic miles or 12,900 cubic kilometers. That may sound like a lot, but it is only about 0.001% of the total Earth’s water volume.

• Forest ecosystems store between 20 and 100 times more carbon per unit area than do croplands.

• In 2007, for the first time in history, the urban population exceeded the rural one.

• According to a fall season poll by the National Surveys on Energy and the Environment (NSEE), 70 percent of US residents believe there is solid evidence of global warming, the highest percentage reported since 2008.

• More than 8,500 wind turbines operate in Texas, generating 10.6 percent of the state’s electricity mix in 2014.

• The U.S. is 5% of the world’s population but uses 25% of its natural resources. We use one million gallons of oil every two minutes.

• One MW is enough to power about 200 homes during periods of peak demand, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator for most of the state.

• If every newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year. Unfortunately only 27% of all American newspapers are recycled.

• At least 50 million acres of rainforest are lost every year, an area equal to the size of England, Wales, and Scotland combined.

• In 2013, the United States recovered nearly 50.1 million tons of paper; that’s 315 lbs. of paper for every person in the country.

• One in four mammals is currently at risk of extinction across the globe.

• Nearly 77% of all U.S. papermakers use some recovered paper to make everything from newspaper to paper packaging to office paper.

• By using ferrous scrap rather than virgin materials in the production of iron and steel, Carbon Dioxide emissions are reduced by 58 percent.

• Airplane emissions account for about 3% of the United States’ total CO2 emissions. The U.S. is responsible for nearly half of worldwide CO2 emissions from aircraft and aircraft emissions are expected to more than triple by mid-century.

• Trees cover an estimated 20.9 million acres of urban land in the continental United States. That’s 3,659 square feet of urban forest per city dweller—about the size of a not-so-modest four-bedroom house.

• About 14 billion pounds of trash are dumped into the ocean every year.

• The world’s tallest tree is a coast redwood in California, measuring more than 360 feet or 110 meters.

• Approximately 5 million tons of oil produced in the world each year ends up in the ocean.

• During the time it takes you to read this sentence, 50 thousand 12-ounce aluminum cans are made.

• The World Bank estimates that 20% of global industrial water pollution is the result of the treatment and dying of textiles. With 25% of all chemicals produced worldwide being used for textiles, fashion is the #2 polluter of clean water on the planet.

• It will take a styrofoam cup at least 50 years to biodegrade naturally.

• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours.

• A leaky faucet that fills a coffee cup in 10 minutes will waste an estimated 3,000 gallons of water per year.

• A full bathtub requires about 70 gallons of water, while taking a 5-minute shower uses only 10 to 25 gallons.

• The U.S. uses 100 billion plastic bags annually, consuming about 12 million barrels of oil. Less than 1% of plastic bags are ever recycled.

• The average U.S. citizen uses 50 pounds of tissue paper per year. Try to buy the highest content of post-consumer recycled content, looking for either 100% recycled or FSC certified tissue or toilet paper.

• According to the U.S. EPA, about 40% of heavy metals including lead, mercury, and cadmium in landfills comes from electronic equipment and discards.

• The refrigerator is the single biggest energy-consuming kitchen appliance. Opening hte door accounts for between $30 and $60 of a typical family’s electricity bill each year.

• In North America, fruits and vegetables travel an average of 1,500 miles before reaching your plate. Buying fresh, local food eliminates long distances traveled and preserves flavor and nutrients.

• 190 Million Cubic Yards of contaminated soil and groundwater cleanup commitments secured, enough to fill the Empire State Building more than 138 times.

• Letting your faucet run for 5 minutes uses about as much energy as a 60-watt light bulb consumes in 14 hours.

• Improperly sealed or caulked windows can account for up to 25% of total heat loss from a house.

• Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) are an energy-saving alternative to incandescent bulbs – they produce the same amount of light, use 1/3 of the electricity and last up to 10 times as long.

• 62 billion – Pounds of hazardous waste that enforcement actions require companies to address.

• U.S. consumers spend up to 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than for tap water.

• 10,000 tonnes of fish from the oceans every hour.

• (90 to 95 million tonnes a year) – are having devastating effects on both the fish targeted and virtually all other marine creatures, from seabirds to coral.

• EPA accounts for just 0.22 percent, or $8 billion, of a $4 trillion federal budget.

• Longline fishing bycatch rates are as high as 50% of non-target species.

• Each year, longline fishing, kills over 300,000 seabirds, including 100,000 albatrosses.

• The DOE notes that the relatively simple task of replacing and cleaning air filters can reduce an air conditioners’ energy consumption by as much as 15 percent.

• The Dallas-based specialty food division of H-E-B has cooked up an idea to turn fresh on its head with leafy greens and butter lettuce still attached to the roots and technically still alive.

• According to the U.S. Department of Energy, air conditioners cost homeowners more than $29 billion a year in energy cost.

• More than 20,000,000 Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tinfoil – all that foil is recyclable!

• Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.

• By heating agar, pouring it into moulds and then freezing it, the team was able to make a selection of plastic-like products and packaging.

• Easily extracted by boiling red algae, agar is used to make confectionery in Japan,. In a project called Agar Plasticity, the Tokyo-based design collective AMAM suggested that the gelatinous substance could be a viable plastic alternative.

• Only around 9 per cent of plastic gets recycled.

• The bulk of the mushroom’s body consists of mass of underground filaments called mycelium. By employing mycelia grown on agricultural waste.

• As much as 13 million tones of plastic enters the ocean globally each year – equivalent to the mass of around 85,000 blue whales.

• Up to one trillion plastic bags are discarded every year too.

• The hulking Gallatin Fossil Plant sits on a scenic bend of the Cumberland River about 30 miles upstream from Nashville. In addition to generating electricity, the plant, built in the early 1950s by the Tennessee Valley Authority, produces more than 200,000 tons of coal residue a year. That coal ash, mixed with water and sluiced into pits and ponds on the plant property, has been making its way into groundwater and the river.

• Of the 44 dark-sky parks around the world, 5 are in Texas.

• Cost to remove CO2 from atmosphere, all of the bad CO2 is $20 trillion… Cost to clean Earth is $100 trillion.

• New bottles are made from only 6.6 per cent recycled plastic.

• As of 2015, 8.3 billion tonnes of plastics have been produced by humans since the early 1950s.

• According to one estimate, this plastic soup covers an area twice the size of the continental United States.

• By 2050, the total amount of plastic produced by humankind is projected to have risen to 34 billion tonnes.

• In the UK this year a ban is coming into force for even products such as sunscreen and make-up, so read ingredients lists.

• Chewing gum is made from synthetic rubber- a plastic – and shockingly around 100,000 tones of the stuff is discarded every year.

• Americans use about 50 billion plastic water bottles a year. However, the U.S.’s recycling rate for plastic is only around 23 percent, which means 38 billion water bottles – more than $1 billion worth of plastic – are wasted each year.

• By heating plastic in a controlled way, coupled with a catalyst, it is possible to produce fuel that doesn’t even need refining and is ready to use.