In honor of Earth Day

Pretty much anyone involved with pedicabs agrees that it's a green industry. We tout rickshaws as earth-friendly, zero-emissions, human-powered, pedal-powered, environmental, ecological, low carbon footprint, and all those other buzz words popular in today's global warming lexicon.

In honor of Earth Day, here are a few statistics to reinforce the value of pedal cabs in your community.

60,000,000 - The number of plastic bottles thrown into U.S. landfills each day. It takes 1.5 million barrels of crude oil each year to produce these bottles - translating into enough fuel to run 100,000 cars for a year.

45,000,000 - The number of barrels of oil saved each year by using public transportation.

2,150,000 - The number of barrels of oil saved if 100,000 homes installed eco-friendly geothermal heating systems.

2,000 - The number of coal-fired power plants located in China. (One new power plant goes into operation every 4 to 7 days in China).

13 - The number of pounds a person would lose if they walked one half hour a day instead of riding or driving a motor vehicle. If every US citizen between the ages of 10 to 74 walked this equivalent each day rather than drive, our carbon dioxide emissions would be decreased by 64 million tons.

3,000,000,000 - Gallons of gas wasted each year due to traffic congestion. Since much pollution is caused while traffic is slowed or stalled due to congestion, many people mistakenly think that this pollution can be prevented by decreasing congestion. Unfortunately that doesn't work, as every attempt to facilitate traffic flow simply results in more traffic. More roads seem to lead to more cars on the roads.

117 - Bicycling is 117% more efficient than walking.

54 - Gallons of gas saved annually by using a bicycle to commute four days a week for four miles (each way). [That's approximately $190 US at today's gas prices]

30 - percent of morning traffic caused by parents dropping their kids off at school.

15 - In 2004, fewer than 15% of children and adolescents use active modes of transportation to or from school. In 1969, approximately half of all schoolchildren walked or bicycled to or from school, and 87% of those living within 1 mile of school walked or bicycled. (CDC report)

36 - Walking is 36 times more dangerous than driving, because Americans lack safe places to walk (e.g. trend towards fewer sidewalks and crosswalks). In 59% of cases for which information is available, pedestrians died in places where they could not find a crosswalk.

55 - On average, states spent just 55 cents per person of their federal transportation funds on pedestrian projects in the years studied, less than 1% of their total federal transportation dollars. Average spending on highways came to $72 per person.

100 - The number of bicycles that could be produced using the energy and resources needed to build one medium-sized car.

40 - Percentage of oil used daily in the U.S. by Cars and SUVs.

Resources:
cleanairsys.com
Bicycleuniverse.info
Scorecard.org