The following facts come from Elizabeth Royte’s history of water in Bottlemania. These facts focus on the history of human water use. The Egyptians, Persians, and Chinese figured out how to dig deep wells as early as 2500 BCE. Sophisticated water-storage systems were built in the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest and in [...]
Archive for the ‘Five Friday Facts’ Category
Five Friday Facts: The Rise of Bottled Water
November 25th, 2011 
Eric Wilson The following set of facts come from Elizabeth Royte’s Bottlemania. This is the third set of facts that have been used for the Five Friday Facts. Click here for the first one. For the second set, click here. According to restaurant consultant Clark Wolf, the restaurant industry revenue from bottled water sales is between $200 [...]
Posted in Eric Wilson, Five Friday Facts, Recylcing 
Tags: Beer, Elizabeth Royte, Plastic, Water 
No Comments »Five Friday Facts: Food Waste
November 18th, 2011 Eric Wilson The other day a copy of the Heifer International holiday catalog arrived. On the fourth page there were a collection of facts about food waste. Here are five of them: In the United States, an estimated 40 percent of food gets thrown away. The United States’ per capita food waste has increased 50 percent since [...]
Five Friday Facts: The Bottled Water Industry
November 11th, 2011 Eric Wilson The following set of facts come from Elizabeth Royte’s Bottlemania. This is the second set of facts that have been used for the Five Friday Facts. Click here for the previous one. Between 1990 and 1997, U.S. sales of bottled water shot from $115 million to $4 billion. They grew another 170% between 1997 and [...]
Posted in Eric Wilson, Five Friday Facts, Recylcing Tags: Elizabeth Royte, EPA, Plastic, Water No Comments »FFF: I Am Over 1 Billion Seconds Old; Can I Make it to 7 Billion?
November 4th, 2011 Justin Manger The short answer is no, probably not. Unless there are major improvements in health and a tripling of the current average lifespan I won’t make it to 220 years old, which is 7 billion seconds. That’s how big a number 7 billion is. With so much focus recently on the world’s population reaching 7 billion [...]
Posted in Five Friday Facts, Justin Manger, News, Sustainability Tags: 7 Billion, Environment, Urban Planning 1 Comment »Five Friday Facts: Solar Power, China, and Trade
October 28th, 2011 Eric Wilson The following facts come from a New York Times article – which served as the basis for this post – on potential trade violations among Chinese solar panel manufacturers. The American solar power market is worth about $6 billion a year. China already accounts for three-fifths of the world’s solar panel production. China exports 95 [...]
Posted in China, Eric Wilson, Five Friday Facts, Renewable Energy Tags: Department of Energy, Photovoltaic, Solar Energy, Trade 2 Comments »Five Friday Facts: Bottlemania Water Facts
October 21st, 2011 Eric Wilson While in between books for school, I picked up a copy of Elizabeth Royte’s Bottlemania. I had previously read (and reviewed) her book Garbage Land. Through two chapters, I have thoroughly enjoyed Royte’s writing and introduction to bottled water. This first set of Five Friday Facts from the book provides an overview of water issues [...]
Posted in China, Eric Wilson, Five Friday Facts Tags: Elizabeth Royte, EPA, Population Growth, Water No Comments »FFF: Agriculture and the Environment
October 14th, 2011 Justin Manger The world has been able to feed increasing masses of humanity thanks to giant leaps in technology and mechanization that have increased yields and reduced the work needed to grow crops. It’s a marvel of modern engineering and human ingenuity. But, can it keep up with the still increasing population boom? What will agriculture look [...]
Posted in Agriculture, Behavior, Conservation, Five Friday Facts, Justin Manger, Sustainability Tags: Environment No Comments »
