Running Numbers 2

About you

1) How many plastic beverage bottles do you think you use and throw away each week? This includes water and soft drinks.

Because there are 52 weeks in a year, how many bottles would you use and throw away each year?

2) Of the plastic bottles you use each week, how many do you put into a recycling bin (instead of the trash that goes to the tip)?

Over the total number of bottles you use in a year (the amount in number 1), how many are recycled?

What percentage of water bottles do you recycle each year?

Taking a bigger Look

1) Look at this picture. How many bottles would you say are shown here?

2) Try looking at one section and then multiplying this way.

3) Would you believe this shows the number of bottles used by Americans every five minutes? Take a guess how many this is. Could you use a ratio of your number of bottles used / year times 20 million Australians? About how many would this be? If 300 million people live in America and used the same number of water bottles as you, how many would be used?

4) The actual number of water bottles shown in this last picture is two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes. How many plastic bottles would be used in an hour? Day? Year? You might have to get rid of some zeros (and add them back afterwards) to use your calculators.

This information comes from this amazing artist.