The UK television company
Channel 4 recently broadcast a programme entitled
The Human Footprint and it graphically represented average statistics about a British resident. Remember here that the keyword here is
average. I don't smoke, yet the statistics indicate that on average I smoke 77,000 cigarettes. Worringly, I do drink beer and wine!
Also worringly, apparently 10 people I know will commit suicide. If this means people I
know of then I can believe it - my maths teacher hung himself, another teacher was decapitated on a train line and a friends sister jumped in front of a train. Grim.
Anyway, as I quite like statistics, I've sought out the statistics detailed in the programme from various sources and collated them here.
It would be interesting to see the stats for other countries such as America. Some items on this list are probably peculiar to us Brits. Do they have baked bins and drink tea in The States?
The stats....
FoodMilk: 15,951 pints To produce this amount of milk for the population, 2.1 million cows are needed, eating 100 kilograms of grass a day.
Meat: 89% of us will eat meat.
Including:
- 4 head of cattle
- 21 sheep
- 15 pigs
- 1200 chickens
- 13,345 eggs.
Potatoes: 2327 kg
Bread: 4283 loaves
Apples: 5272
Carrots: 10,866
95% of our food is imported.
Food packaging: 8.49 tons
Chocolate: 8.2kg a year. 10,000 chocolate bars in a lifetime.
Bake Beans: 845 tins.
Beer:10351 pints
Wine:1,694 bottles
Tea:74,842 cups in a lifetime.
Waste and Sewage.Human wind: 1-1.5 litres of gas a day, 12-25 times a day (farting, belching), 35,815 litres
Toilet rolls: 4239 to cope with 2,865kg of faeces.
Sewage: 150 litres per day per person,
Disposed of across the country in a day are:
- 270,000 condoms
- 2.5 million tampons
- 1.4 million sanitary towels
- 700,000 panty liners
- 3,800 nappies (diapers)
2.5 billion nappies are disposed of each year in the UK making them the largest contributor to landfill, taking a huge 500 years to decompose. At age five we will have produced more carbon dioxide than that of a person in Tanzania over their entire lifetime. 40 tons of waste is sent to landfill over a persons lifetime.
During babyhood we produce 254 litres of urine.
RelationshipsLanguage: average vocabulary is 25,000 words, only 4% of the English Oxford Dictionary.
We speak on average:
- 123,205,750 words in a lifetime.
- 2,000-4,000 words spoken by a man per day.
- 6,400-8,000 words spoken by a woman per day.
We will have 300 people in our social group at any one time.
- Partners: 10 different partners.
- 1,700 friendships made.
- 4,239 times having sex. About twice a week
- Love: we will fall in love 3 times.
- Marriage:11.5 years
- 70% will attempt a marriage once.
Personal Hygiene- 7163 baths in a lifetime using 1 million litres of water
- 656 bars of soap
- 198 bottles of shampoo
- 272 deodorants
- 276 tubes of toothpastes
- 78 toothbrushes
- 411 skin care product
- 37 perfumes
- 35 tubes of styling gel
- 25 bottles of nail polish
- 21 sticks of lipstick
- 11,00 tampons/sanitary towels
- 5.6 bottles of fake tan
Shower gel components take 800 years to disappear from the water system. We wash our hair 11,500 times in a lifetime.
Wealth and Expenditure£1,537,380 spent in a lifetime. Housing, food and clothing £552,772, tax £286,311, leisure and entertainment £236,312.
Consumer goods:
- 3.5 washing machines
- 3.4 fridges
- 3.2 microwaves
- 4.8 televisions
- 9.8 DVD players
- 15 computers (240kg of fossil fuels, 22kg of chemicals, 1.5 tons of water needed to produce a home computer)
£920 spent per person on the average Christmas.
628 Christmas gifts received over a lifetime.
Clothing- Clothing market is worth £23 billion in the U.K.
- £385 per year spent on clothes or £3,222 pounds spent on clothes over a lifetime.
- 500 litres of water and 40g of pesticides needed to produce a t-shirt.
- 570kg of chemicals added to the water system through washing clothes.
Travel- 197 miles walked per year
- 15,464 miles walked in a lifetime.
- We will drive 452,662 miles in a lifetime. 135,950 litres of petrol will be needed.
- 8 Cars owned
- 59 foreign holidays. 737 tons of carbon released into the atmosphere.
Information and Culture.- Television: 148 minutes a day. 900 hours a year. 2944 days in a lifetime.
- 533 books read in a lifetime.
- 3% cannot read in the UK
- 40% choose not to read
- more households own two cars than two novels
- 2455 newspapers read
- 24 trees will be used to make the books and newspapers you need.
- 6 acts of worship a year, 390 over a lifetime.
DemocracyYou will vote in fifty elections.
Health- 1,980 babies born a day
- 78.5 years: life expectancy. That's 2,475,576,000 seconds
- Cigarettes: 77,000 over a lifetime. 1/3 of all cancers are from smoking.
- Vomit: Twice a year, five buckets over a lifetime.
- 314 visits to the doctor.
- 30,000 pills in a lifetime.
- Tears shed 61.5 litres.
- 104,390 dreams in a lifetime.
- 9.42: Hair length in metres if it is not cut
- 9.14: Beard length in metres if it is not cut
- 415m blinks of an eye
- 121 pints of tears
Death1700 people we know.
Death rates include:
- 305 heart disease
- 179 stokes
- 111 flu and pneumonia
- 99 from lung cancer
- 92 from lower respiratory diseases
- 63 from dementia
- 49 cancers of the colon
- 32 from breast cancer
- 10 from suicide
- 9 in road accidents
- 1 in a fire
- 1 in 3 will know a person who has been murdered.
Labels: statistics
