Statistics
-Total U.S. credit card dept: $793,100,000,000
-U.S. spends annually on imported toys: $23,631,000,000
-Consumers 65 and older are increasing their debt faster than any other age group in the past year
-Consumer spending is driving 70 percent of all economic activity in the U.S
-For the first quarter of 2014, which shows a $129 billion increase in overall household debt from the previous period.
-American's spent $220,000,000,000 on Christmas decoration in 2004. This is 9 times the national budget of Ethiopia and 14 times what the U.S gives in financial aid.
-1 percept of material we consume is still in use 6 months after we consume them
-62 percent of students surveyed in 2005-07 think it’s important to have a lot of money, while just 48 percent had the same belief in 1976-78.
-More than one in three, 9 to 14 year olds prefer buying things than most other things they do. Almost two thirds are only interested in jobs that pay lots of money.
-Three quarters of American teens spend more than four hours a week at a shopping mall.
-In the UK the NCC found “a new generation of young people aged 10 to 19” who “are now avid shoppers”, but “they are the least happy generation of the post-war era”
-1990, $100 million was spent on advertising to children in America. By 2000, that figure had increased to $2 billion
-Nearly 40% of Generation Y surveyed said they didn’t want to work hard, as compared to 25% of Baby Boomers surveyed in the 70s.
-U.S has 5% of the worlds population but, use 30% of worlds resources, creating 30% of the worlds waste
-If everybody consumed at U.S rates we would need 3 to 5 planets
-75% of worlds fisheries are fished at or beyond capacity
-80% of the world's forests are gone
-In the Amazon alone we are loosing 3000 trees a minute
-There are over 100,000 synthetic chemicals in use in commers today and only a handful have been tested for health impacts and none tested for synergistic health impacts.
-Human breast milk is on top of the food group to have the most toxins
-Globally 200,000 people a day are moving from environments that have sustained them for generations to cities
-U.S admits to emitting 4,000,000,000 pounds of toxic waste a year however, it probably is a lot more
-30% of kids in the Congo have dropped out of school to mine coltan a metal we need for our cheap and disposable
electronics
-In North America after 6 months only 1% are still in use
-In other words 99% of the stuff we harvest, mine, process, transport is trashed in 6 months
-Average U.S. individual consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago
-We see more advertisments in 1 year than people have 50 years ago in their life time
-Every person in the United States creates 4.5lbs of garbage a day which is twice what they made 30 years ago.