 |
Silver Institute CRN Summer 2007 (MP3-466 KB) |
To maintain our standard of living, every day . . .
- 18 million tons of raw material must be mined, cut or harvested to meet the demands of US citizens for "things and stuff"; about 150 pounds for every man, woman and child.
- 2,750 acres of pavement are laid, four times as much surface area as is mined, and enough concrete and asphalt to make a bicycle path 7 feet wide from coast to coast. (sand, gravel, stone chips, limestone)
- 21 million photographs are snapped, more than 20 acres of wallet-sized photos. (silver, iodine)
- 400 acres of asphalt roofing are nailed down. (silica, borate, limestone, trona, feldspar, talc, silica sand)
- 640 acres - one square mile - of carpeting is woven. (barite, calcium carbonate)
- 9.7 million square feet of plate and window glass - about 223 acres - are used; enough to cover 200 football fields. (silica sand, trona)
- 4,000,000 eraser tipped pencils are purchased. That's enough erasers to correct all the mistakes from 1,500 miles of notebook paper - about 129 acres of goofs. (graphite, kaolin, pumice)
- 426 bushels of paper clips - 35,000,000 are purchased. Seven million are actually used; 8-9 million are lost and almost 5 million are twisted up by nervous fingers during telephone conversations. (iron, clay, limestone, trona, steel)
- 164 square miles of newsprint is used to print 62.5 million newspapers; enough to line a bird cage 12 miles wide and 13 miles long. (trona, kaolin)
- 187,000 tones of cement are mixed, enough to construct a four foot wide sidewalk from coast to coast. (limestone, sand, gravel, stone chips)
- 3.6 million light bulbs are purchased. (tungsten, trona, silica sand, copper, aluminum)
- 10 tons of colored gravel for aquariums is purchased.
- 80 pounds of gold are used to fill 500,000 dental cavities.
- 550,000 pounds of toothpaste - 2.5 million tubes - are used; enough to fill a small jetliner. (calcium carbonate, zeolites, trona, clays, silica)
Courtesy of SME Foundation for Public Information and Education, Inc.