Interesting Facts
Interesting Facts
Here are some interesting and little known facts that affect us all:
Water Facts
- 25% of the World's population lives in areas of acute water shortages. This is predicted to double over the next 30 years.
- Cotton is an agriculturally intensive product requiring significant volumes of fertiliser, water and other chemicals.
- 100 million tonnes of water a year are consumed by the UK's clothing and textile industry.
- 70 million tonnes of water is wastewater, meaning unrecyclable.
Energy Facts
- Recycling clothes saves more energy than recycling glass - it takes ten times more energy to make a tonne of textiles than it does a tonne of glass.
- Drying wet clothes around the house during a hot summer will actually cool the house down.
- 35% of people who have tumble dryers use them all year round. Using a tumble dryer takes more energy than any other household appliance – two thirds more than washing machines.
- A 60°C wash uses almost half as much energy as a 90°C wash.
- A 40°C wash uses almost half as much energy as a 60°C wash.
- According to the washing powder manufacturer, Ariel, over the course of a year, washing at 30°C instead of 60°C saves enough CO2 to fill four million double-decker buses.
Transport Facts
- The overwhelming majority of the world's vehicles are powered by oil, either in the form of petrol (most cars), diesel (most trucks) or kerosene (most planes). Even those trains and cars powered by electricity usually rely on fossil fuels being burned in power stations.
- All told, transport accounts for around 14% of human-created greenhouse emissions – and that's excluding the manufacturing of vehicles. Most transport emissions take the form of CO2, which is created when the carbon in the fuel is burned by an engine, and then combined with the oxygen in the air.
