save the planet

facts: 1. Every year we dump a massive 2.12 billion tons of waste. 2. This stunning amount of This stunning amount of waste is partly because 99 percent of the stuff we buy is trashed within 6 months. 3. Leading green companies are becoming zero-waste companies. Zero waste is a philosophy that encourages redesign so that all products are reused. The process is similar to the way resources are reused in nature. 4. Between 20% and 40% of fruit and vegetables are rejected by supermarkets before they even hit the shelves. Why? Because they don’t adhere to their cosmetic standards – they’re misshapen, lumpy or just plain weird-looking. 5. The amount of trash generated by the UK could fill Britain’s largest lake, Lake Windermere, in just 8 months. 6. We used to get through 500 million plastic bags every week in the UK – amounting to billions of bags and thousands of tonnes of plastic.

How much pollution we breathe in is dependent on many factors, such as access to clean energy for cooking and heating and the weather. Air pollution can get to long distances, sometimes across continents on international weather patterns.

Nobody is safe from this pollution, which comes from five main human sources. These sources spew out a range of substances including carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen oxide, ground-level ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, hydrocarbons, and lead–all of which are harmful to human health.

Open waste burning and organic waste in landfills release harmful dioxins, furans, methane, and fine particulate matter like black carbon into the atmosphere. Globally, an estimated 40 percent of waste is openly burned. The problem is most severe in urbanizing regions and developing countries.