Human Footprint Part 5

On average, we buy 48 new pieces of clothing each year. It's created a clothing market in the U.S. worth more than $345 billion. Which means that every man, woman and child in the country, spends an average of $1000 a year on new outfits, and in weight throws away 68 pounds of clothing and textiles each year. Have you ever stopped to consider what goes into making just an everyday item of clothing? Even a simple garment has hidden costs in terms of the footprint it creates, it takes 528 gallons of water, for example, and one third of a pound of chemicals along with some cotton to make one T-shirt. And then you begin to imagine how many t-shirts there must be. But the resources used to make one of them are only one part of the footprint that a basic T-shirt leaves. And whether you take it on vacation or not, that T-shirt is already logged some serious air miles from the U.S. to China and back 14,625 miles just to get the components to the factory and the T-shirt back to you. 

How about jeans? Most of them are manufactured abroad so an average pair of jeans have already traveled 20,000 miles before we go anywhere in them. And since we're looking at footprints, just see what goes into these sneakers, a mass of different natural and synthetic compounds. The leather comes from Texas, but it may be tanned in South Korea, and then stitched together in Indonesia before they're even out of the box, they're likely also to have traveled 20,000 miles, using a resources and increasing the weight of their footprint. A brand new pair of sneakers will have traveled farther than we will ever walk in them. At any given time a man will have 7 pairs of jeans and an average of more than 25 t-shirts. On average, each garment lasts three years. 

Over a lifetime, a man spends $52,972 on his wardrobe. Which looks like this. A woman's wardrobe is more extensive and more expensive. Those dainty feet can create a big footprint. Here it is, her lifetime's wardrobe. But the wardrobe expanse doesn't stop here. Inevitably, all those clothes become dirty laundry. The average American generates 500 pounds of dirty laundry every year. That adds up to a colossal 35 billion loads of laundry across the country. That's 1100 loads started. Every second. And all that laundry uses up to 560 billion gallons of water equal to the amount that flows over Niagara Falls every 11 days. Think of this as the washing machine which we need to leave running for 11 days to wash the nation's clothes. But laundry day is the farthest thing from the minds of our young couple. 

Now they're out to party and for many drinkers, that means beer. Supplied by an enormous industry of nearly 1400 breweries. On average, each person in America puts away a lot of beer. In fact, this much. It looks as if life has been one long party. A lifetime consumption, 13,248 beers. A wine drinker will open this many bottles in a lifetime. 942. And some of those bottles are likely to be opened and glasses poured on the most important day in a couple's life. Their wedding. Four and a half million of us get married each year and we do so lavishly. On average, the big day costs $26,327. But the cost of the big day is nothing to the lifetime expense that awaits our newlyweds. 

A surprisingly large sum of money will pass through their hands. But as it does, we will see how their footprint upon the world will get heavier, with each step and every dollar. An average American couple in a typical American town, now our newlyweds are setting out to buy their first home. On average, we move about ten times in our lifetime. Only when we can look beneath the skin of a house, can we see all the materials that have gone into it? It takes more than 64 trees to supply all the wood used in an average home. If we examine a new 2000 ft² house, we come across nearly 14,000 feet of lumber. And to get an idea of how much that is, if you've placed it all end to end, it would be enough lumber to stretch across the Brooklyn Bridge and back again. Then there's 11,500 ft² of siding. Enough to cover four tennis courts. 

A house will need 17 tons of concrete. There are more than 5 and a half 1000 ft² of interior wall materials. Wood paneling and insulation. 400 pounds of copper piping. There are 18 windows plus toilets and bathrooms. And then the whole house has to be painted and requires 30 gallons in all, enough to fill up one and a half bathroom tubs. It's big, it's costly, but we call it home, and with everything that goes into what it's a big part of our human footprint. With the American population expanding faster than ever, the demand for housing is soaring with 1.5 million new homes like this one being built. Every year. And if we don't buy a new