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Want to know why America is viewed so unfavorably?

From: Container-Recycling.Org
"In 2001, 285 million Americans failed to recycle some 51 billion aluminum beverage cans - enough to encircle the Earth 153 times if laid end-to-end. That same year, 451 million residents of 18 European nations wasted only 8.9 billion cans. Also in 2001, over 65% of the US Population had access to curside recycling.

"Americans produce 1.31 tons/year/person of garbage (national average)"

Waste Production

In the U.S., 4.39 pounds of trash per day and up to 56 tons of trash per year are created by the average person.
Only about one-tenth of all solid garbage in the United States gets recycled.
Every year we fill enough garbage trucks to form a line that would stretch from the earth, halfway to the moon.
Each day the United States throws away enough trash to fill 63,000 garbage trucks.
Almost 1/3 of the waste generated the U.S. is packaging.
Diapers: An average child will use between 8,000 -10,000 disposable diapers ($2,000 worth) before being potty trained. Each year, parents and babysitters dispose of about 18 billion of these items. In the United States alone these single-use items consume nearly 100,000 tons of plastic and 800,000 tons of tree pulp. We will pay an average of $350 million annually to deal with their disposal and, to top it off, these diapers will still be in the landfill 300 years from now. Americans throw away 570 diapers per second. That's 49 million diapers per day.
Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
Every year, Americans make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas.
The amount of glass bottles Americans throw away every two weeks would have filled both World Trade Center towers.
Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to rebuild our commercial air fleet every three months, and enough iron and steel to supply all our nation's automakers every day.
Throwing away one aluminum can wastes as much energy as if that can were 1/2 full of gasoline.
In the U.S., an additional 5 million tons of waste is generated during the holidays. Four million tons of this is wrapping paper and shopping bags.
Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail every year. Most of it winds up in landfills.
The average American uses 650 pounds of paper a year.
Each year, Americans trash enough office paper to build a 12-foot wall from Los Angeles to New York City.
Americans toss out enough paper & plastic cups, forks and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times.
The average American office worker goes through around 500 disposable cups every year.
Nearly 44 million American workers purchase or eat lunch out every weekday.
Americans make nearly 400 billion photocopies a year - about 750,000 copies every minute of every day.
U.S. fax machines sent 30 billion faxes in 1990.
U.S. businesses now use about 21 million tons of paper every year. That's about 175 pounds of paper for each American.
Enough hazardous waste is generated in one year to fill the New Orleans Superdome 1,500 times over.
New York City alone throws out enough garbage each day to fill the Empire State Building.
In one day, Americans get rid of 20,000 cars and 4,000 trucks and buses.
As of 1992, 14 billion pounds of trash were dumped into ocean annually around the world.
Forty-three thousand tons of food is thrown out in the United States each day.
Americans throw out about 270 million tires every year.
Sixty-five billion aluminum soda cans are used each year.

-According to a 1997 study by US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) entitled "Estimating and Addressing America's Food Losses", about 96 billion pounds of food, or more than a quarter of the 356 billion pounds of edible food available for human consumption in the United States, was lost to human use by food retailers, consumers, and foodservice establishments in 1995.

Fresh fruits and vegetables, fluid milk, grain products, and sweeteners (mostly sugar and high-fructose corn syrup) accounted for two-thirds of the losses. 16 billion pounds of milk and 14 billion pounds of grain products are also included in this loss.

In 2002, the world's passenger car fleet hit 531 million. A quarter of these cars were in the United States, a country with just five percent of the world's population, and a long known love affair for the automobile. The average car in the US travels 10 percent more each year than a car in the United Kingdom, about 50 percent more than one in Germany, and almost 200 percent more than a car in Japan.

In 2005, North Americans comprised 5.1% of the worlds population, and accounted for 23.8% of all Internet users. Asia comprised 56.4% of the worlds population, and accounted for 34.5% of all global Internet users. Approximately 32% of North Americans do not use the Internet.

Poll: Census data belie public beliefs on immigration
Arizonans appear to overestimate count of undocumented
Paul Davenport
Associated Press
Sept. 20, 2005 12:00 AM

PHOENIX - A new survey indicates that many Arizonans overestimate how many Hispanics, who represent one of every four state residents, are undocumented immigrants and underestimate how many are U.S. citizens.

Maricopa County adults surveyed by the Behavior Research Center estimated that 39 percent of Arizona Hispanics are undocumented immigrants. But the 2000 U.S. census found 24 percent of Arizona Hispanics to be non-citizens, a grouping that also includes foreign nationals who are legally in the United States.

Those surveyed also estimated that 47 percent of Arizona Hispanics are native-born U.S. citizens, significantly below the 64 percent indicated by census figures. Those figures also indicated that an additional 8 percent of Arizona Hispanics are naturalized citizens, the center said Monday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project counted 762 active hate groups in the United States in 2004.Note: With South Carolina and New Jersey being the States with the highest concentration of hate groups. North and South Dakota, and New Mexico were the only States without such a group.

In the past fifty years, the US Government has actively participated in the overthrow of governments in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, Bolivia, Panama, Indonesia, Afganistan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Guyana, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Zaire, Angola, Mozambique, and Iraq. We have propped up vile dictators such as Noriega, Mobutu, Marcos, Suharto, and the Shah of Iran among others.

"[Americans] are regularly told by politicians and the media, that America is the world's most generous nation. This is one of the most conventional pieces of 'knowledgeable ignorance'. According to the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the US gave between $6 and $15 billion in foreign aid in the period between 1995 and 1999. In absolute terms, Japan gives more than the US, between $9 and $15 billion in the same period.

But the absolute figures are less significant than the proportion of gross domestic product (GDP, or national wealth) that a country devotes to foreign aid. On that league table, the US ranks twenty-second of the 22 most developed nations. As former President Jimmy Carter commented: 'We are the stingiest nation of all'. Denmark is top of the table, giving 1.01% of GDP, while the US manages just 0.1%. The United Nations has long established the target of 0.7% GDP for development assistance, although only four countries actually achieve this: Denmark, 1.01%; Norway, 0.91%; the Netherlands, 0.79%; Sweden, 0.7%.

Apart from being the least generous nation, the US is highly selective in who receives its aid. Over 50% of its aid budget is spent on middle-income countries in the Middle East, with Israel being the recipient of the largest single share". Note: Source is: "Why do people hate America?" by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, 2002. p79