This is the first post in a series on natural disasters, in Natural Disaster Week. Throughout this week, you’ll find information-rich posts on different kinds of natural disasters. So hang around! Subscribe to the RSS feed to stay updated!
On May 2 (today!), the Facebook world is holding Harry Potter Status Day, when Facebook users are supposed to post Harry Potter quotes as their statuses. Here’s over 50 great quotes from the Harry Potter world, that you could use as your status. Enjoy!
1. “I don’t need a cloak to become invisible” – Albus Dumbledore
2. “I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death — if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.” – Severus Snape
Earth hour is an annual, global, event organized by the WWF, requesting people from all over the world to turn off the lights for just one hour, to bring attention to the climate change crisis.
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What would the world be like if we had no paper? We’d have no notebooks to write on, or handy cardboard boxes to carry stuff in, or paper containers for yummy cereal, or even nothing to read our news on! Paper is undoubtedly one of the most essential requirements for living in the modern world. (Check out some very cool paper origami!)
Paper has got a lot more to it than what meets the eye. It’s got a rich and interesting history. The paper that we use today has detailed process behind it that produces it. So, let’s look at some really interesting and useful paper facts.
1. The United States, followed by Canada, Finland, Japan, and Sweden, is the world’s largest producer of paper and paper products (newspapers, boxes, etc). That doesn’t come much as a surprise, given that industrialized nations, with 20 percent of the world’s population, consume about 87 percent of the world’s printing and writing papers.
2. According to recent estimates, the paper industry is the 4th largest contributor (or third largest, depending on which stats you look at) to greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
3. If the United States cut office paper use by just 10%, it would prevent the emission of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases. That’s the same as taking 280,000 cars off the road.
4. About 25% of what the people in our world throw away is made of paper. Goes to show the importance of recycling.
5. Americans receive about 4 million tons of junk mail a year. If 100,000 people stopped getting/sending junk mail, we could save up to 150,000 trees annually. Note to junk mailers: if you really gotta send that junk, be a little considerate about trees, and use email.
6. Recycling just one ton of paper saves about 17 trees.
7. China, India and the rest of Asia are the fastest growing paper users, but they still lag way behind the developed world. Europe uses about 500 pounds of paper per person per year, while Australia uses about 300 pounds of paper per person per year.
8. The average British family throws away 6 trees worth of paper away a year.
9. Paper making is a quite detailed and meticulous process, and involves more than 7 or 8 different processes. Check out how it’s made here!
Trees are an extremely important and precious natural resource. They’re not only our prime source of paper, but they’re also very important environmentally. So, we need to make sure that as less trees as possible have to be cut down to meet our needs.
Enter recycling. Here are some facts about paper recycling, that I hope will make you realize the importance of recycling paper.
10. Recycling about a ton of paper saves 17 mature trees, 7 thousand US gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, and 4,100 kilowatt-hours electricity — enough energy to power the average American home for six months.
11. Up to 40% less energy is required to recycle paper compared with making it from raw materials. The lower energy requirement means that recycled paper produces 73% less air pollution than if it was made from raw materials.
12. One million tons of recovered paper is enough to fill more than 14,000 railroad cars.
13. In 2008, the amount of paper recovered for recycling averaged 340 pounds for every person in the U.S.
14. In 2008, a record-high 57.4 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling.
15. About 56% of the paper consumed in the United States during 2007 was recovered for recycling. That’s quite a lot.
Paper has some impressive consumption figures associated with it. And rightly so, given the huge part of our lives that it is.
Do you have any paper facts you’d like to share with us? If so, please use the comment box below!
UPDATED: I’ve added 6 more universities to the end of this list. Leave a comment to suggest more!
Almost every university in the world has an online presence. Universities have to deal with a lot of information, and organizing all this information on a website in a reader friendly manner is not an easy thing to do.
As a prospective undergrad student, I’ve gone through many universities’ websites. And I think I know what the typical person (and a typical internet user) would want from a university website. Here are two points that I think cover it all:
During my applications season, I came across many university websites. Here are the 44 well designed ones (note that this isn’t a “top 50″ list. It’s just a plain old list. No competition).
With technology like the iPhone or Blackberry, you aren’t just cool if you have one. But, if you have one that is gold plated or gold accented, you’ve then got some real bragging rights.
In this post we’ll be going over prices for a gold plated vs. a non-gold plated version of various tech gadgets and if the gold plating is worth the price. (All prices in USD).
Muhammad Siyab is an avid blogger from Karachi, Pakistan. He loves to blog about cool, useful stuff (on Listfied). He is currently doing A'Levels. He'd love you to interact with him on Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. You can contact him at msiyab[at]gmail[dot]com
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