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Bal Tashchit:
How much do you know about waste?

Quiz yourself:

1. What percentage of paper used yearly in the United States is used just for packaging?
   1. 8%
   2. 23%
   3. 50%
   
   
   
2. If you are an average adult who weights 150 pounds, how much garbage will you generate in your lifetime?
   1. 1 ton (2,000 lbs.)
   2. 10 tons (20,000 lbs.)
   3. 45 tons (90,000 lbs.)
   
   
   
3. If all the aluminum thrown away in the U.S. were recycled, how long would it take to gather enough aluminum to rebuild all the commercial airliners in the U.S.?
   1. 10 years
   2. 2 years
   3. 3 months
   
   
   
4. How much of your garbage is packaging that you throw away immediately?
   1. 10%
   2. 18%
   3. 33%
   
   
   
5. The paper equivalent of how many trees is used each week to supply U.S. citizens with the Sunday newspaper?
   1. 10,000 trees
   2. 50,000 trees
   3. 500,000 trees
   
   
   
6. What is the percentage of newspapers that are thrown away not recycled?
   1. 25%
   2. 48%
   3. 71%
   
   
   
7. Which of the following breaks down first in a landfill?
   1. paper cup
   2. plastic cup
   3. aluminum can
   4. none of the above
   
   
   
8. Which country uses half as many resources as we do in the U.S. to produce a single manufactured item?
   1. Japan
   2. Germany
   3. Sweden
   4. all of the above

*Taken from Let the Earth Teach You Torah, Shomrei Adamah, Ellen Bernstein & Dan Fink
(Statistics originally from 50 Simple Things you can do to Save the Earth.)

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Answers
1. a
2. c
3. c
4. c
5. c
6. c
7. d (most landfill contents are "mummified" because there is no air to catalyze the breakdown)
8. d

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