These facts and figures assist in shaping how we build comparisons and analogies in the game world of Solubrious.
Solubrious Research:
How many humans?
8 billion
https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population
“Global energy consumption peaked at some 620 exajoules in 2023”
https://www.statista.com/topics/4042/global-energy-consumption/#topicOverview
What percentage use electricity:
91.6% of globe
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS
What percentage use vehicles:
Private: In 2015, around 947 million passenger cars and 335 million commercial vehicles were in operation worldwide.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281134/number-of-vehicles-in-use-worldwide/
Public: 4.5 Billion public transport users
https://www.statista.com/topics/2994/public-transportation/#topicOverview
How many use cooling?
House: Average from sample 44.2%
https://www.statista.com/statistics/911064/worldwide-air-conditioning-penetration-rate-country
1.02B tonnes CO2
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-heating-cooling
Work: 44.2%
Estimate based on above source
Food: in Southeast Asia and China, only 65% of the population owns a refrigerator; in Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, 80%; and in Latin America, 82% (Electrolux, 2019).
_Average: 75.6%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator
_https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/not-just-cool-convenience-how-electric-refrigeration-shaped-cold-chain
_https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mcn.13083
Wow. So many articles are pay-gated from reliable sources. “Under the apple tree, you’ve got knowledge for a fee.”
How many use heating?
Home: 4.1B tonnes co2 from heating globally
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-heating-cooling
Work:
Global HVAC market size: $296.2 billion
https://worldmetrics.org/heating-industry-statistics/
Average unit cost: Central AC units average $5,900
https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/hvac/central-ac-unit-cost/
50,169 new units per annum on average
Work:
Water: “Water heating accounts for about 18% of your home’s energy use and is the typically the second largest energy expense in any home. “
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/water-heating
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the average home in the U.S. consumed around 10,715 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2020, or about 893 kWh of electricity per month1 — but consumption rates vary widely across the country. Hawaiians used the least amount of energy in 2020 at just 6,446 kWh, while homeowners in Louisiana consumed more than double that amount at 14,407 kWh.
Household Item Estimated Energy Consumed Per Year (kWh)
Washer 140
Ceiling Fan 154
Light Bulbs 182
Mini Fridge 220
Dishwasher 251
TV 341
Dehumidifier 504
Dryer 550
Space Heater 630
Refrigerator 657
Window AC 864
Gaming PC “1,400 ”
Tankless Water Heater “3,500 ”
Pool Pump “4,000 ”
https://www.ecowatch.com/electricity/how-many-kwh-does-a-house-use
How many use phone (charge daily)
“There were more than 8.58 billion mobile subscriptions in use worldwide in 2022, compared to a global population of 7.95 billion.”
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/04/charted-there-are-more-phones-than-people-in-the-world/
How many stream audio (per day)
“Daily audio consumption amounted to 3 hours and 50 minutes of daily listening across both ad supported and ad free platforms like radio, podcasts, streaming music services and satellite radio.”
https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2025/the-record-q2-audio-listening-trends-2/
“The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, which includes streaming, now accounts for approximately 1.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with video streaming representing a major share of that footprint.”
https://greenly.earth/en-us/leaf-media/data-stories/the-carbon-cost-of-streaming#anchor-articles_content$e52aa954-3dfb-4275-a887-af5b68081e0b
How many stream video (p day)
“the average American spends 3 hours 49 minutes per day using streaming services. “
“Since 2022, Netflix has matched 100% of its global electricity consumption with renewable energy credits.”
Despite Netflix’s efforts to track and reduce its emissions, the company’s total carbon footprint in 2023, based on location-based accounting, was 896,871 metric tons of CO₂e.
“A white paper by the Carbon Trust estimates that streaming one hour of video generates approximately 55g CO₂e. This is roughly equivalent to:
Microwaving four bags of popcorn
Boiling an electric kettle three times”
“Extrapolating from this, if the emissions intensity of streaming is similar across other platforms, the total emissions from all streaming services combined could be as high as 29.7 million metric tons of CO₂e annually.”
https://greenly.earth/en-us/leaf-media/data-stories/the-carbon-cost-of-streaming#anchor-articles_content$e52aa954-3dfb-4275-a887-af5b68081e0b
How many use water (How much p day)
“44% of household wastewater is not treated properly, damaging ecosystems and human health. (WHO)”
https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/water
“During 2015–2018, US children and adolescents drank an average of 23 ounces of plain water daily. US adults drank an average of 44 ounces.”
https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/php/data-research/fast-facts-water-consumption.html
How many wash clothes (% inorganic)
“The report estimates the resource consumption of roughly 590,000,000 washing machines in 38 countries with about 2.3 billion people, which is about one third of the world population. “
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225802892_Electricity_and_water_consumption_for_laundry_washing_by_washing_machine_worldwide
“ Building on Browne’s work, scientists at Plymouth University in the UK, Browne’s alma mater, determined that the wastewater from a 6‐kg load of synthetic laundry could carry more than 720,000 microfibres.”
“In 2017, while collaborating with Orb Media, a non‐profit journalism organization, Mason detected microplastics in 81% of tap water samples from across the world—98.3% of the debris consisted of microfibres. In 2018, she discovered microplastics in 242 out of 259 bottled‐water samples from nine countries. “WHO, as part of its continuous review of new evidence on water quality, would review the very scarce available evidence with the objective of identifying evidence gaps and establishing a research agenda to inform a more thorough risk assessment,” said WHO spokesperson Tarik Jašarević.”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6123651/
How many buildings built per year
“As outlined in this edition, the buildings and construction sector contributes significantly to global climate change, accounting for about 21 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, buildings were responsible for 34 per cent of global energy demand and 37 per cent of energy and process-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.”
https://www.unep.org/resources/report/global-status-report-buildings-and-construction
How much rare or other earths mined p/year
“As of 2025, China produced nearly 70 percent of the total global rare earth mine production. In a distant second place was the United States, accounting for a 13.1 percent share of the global rare earth production that year. “
https://www.statista.com/statistics/270277/mining-of-rare-earths-by-country/?srsltid=AfmBOoqiuMAk5iqvOdMYSLu3R3yD-iDGnvt6jGU7gQ2NflwsWFV8m2Cf
“It is shown that there are at least total 146 advanced and mining projects, involving over 303.4 million tons of rare earth oxides around the world and some newly designed supply chains. Among those projects, carbonatite type deposits are currently the main sources and most likely will dominant future targets for exploration and mining. Asia remains the largest source of REE, but Greenland, Africa, and Europe show important resource potentials if environmental issues and processing technologies are well addressed.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169136823001439
How many trees chopped per day
How much energy used to power work per day
“CBO estimates that the manufacturing sector was responsible for 12 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2021. About 75 percent of those emissions came from burning fuel to create heat, and the rest were by-products of industrial processes that transform materials into products.”
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60030
How much fuel to transport food per day
“We find that although food is transported long distances in general (1640 km delivery and 6760 km life-cycle supply chain on average) the GHG emissions associated with food are dominated by the production phase, contributing 83% of the average U.S. household’s 8.1 t CO2e/yr footprint for food consumption. Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish.”
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es702969f
How much plastic to package food per day
“8.3 BILLION Metric Tons (9.1 BILLION US Tons) of plastic has been produced since plastic was introduced in the 1950s.”
“79% of plastic that has ever been made still sits in landfills or the natural environment (with the exception of the small amount that has been incinerated or recycled)”
“Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, averaging about 13 bottles per month for every person in the U.S.!”
“The world produces more than 26 million US tons of polystyrene (plastic foam) each year [8]. Americans alone throw away around 25 billion Styrofoam coffee cups every year”
https://www.earthday.org/fact-sheet-single-use-plastics/
How much waste collection and processing cost per day in fuel
“Over two billion metric tons of unsustainable, municipally generated waste are thrown away globally every year, “
https://www.earthday.org/how-our-trash-impacts-the-environment/
“Fuel consumption during seven different daily activities of a garbage co-collection truck and a normal packer truck was estimated from the trucks’ global positioning system (GPS) data and fuel consumption records. The co-collection and the normal garbage packer consumed approximately 1.8 L and 1.26 L of diesel per km, respectively, while travelling within the collection areas. Using these fuel rates and the GPS data, the results show that both types of trucks consumed more than 60% of daily total fuel while actually collecting waste on the route. “
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19723822/
How much plastic, electricity and metal and water to produce medicine and health per day
“Data suggest that the global health care sector belches out between 4.4 and 5.2 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Aviation, by comparison, is estimated to contribute 2 to 5 percent. In a landmark 2019 report, the group Health Care Without Harm calculated that the United States produces the greatest share of the world’s health care emissions and has the highest per-capita health care climate footprint.”
https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/confronting-health-cares-carbon-footprint
“The U.S. healthcare sector alone generates 1.7 million tons of plastic pollution every year, or about 8.5% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. An estimated 20 to 25% of the more than 14,000 tons of trash hospitals across the country produce every day is plastic.”
https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2025/2/20/excessive-plastic-in-healthcare-the-growing-crisis
“Given that the US produces around 5.9 million tonnes of medical waste per year,6 this suggests that around 1.7 million tonnes of this will be plastics. The UK National Health Service is estimated to dispose of 133,000 tonnes of plastic each year.8 The proportion of hospital waste which is composed of plastics varies between countries, for example this constitutes 12% in Peru, 27% in Jordan and 46% in Italy, and differences probably relate to the differential use of single-use plastics.9”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7068768/
Pets (food, waste, health, water, per day)
“In the U.S., feeding dogs and cats accounts for more than a quarter of the environmental impact from meat consumption. The pollution created from the meat that dogs and cats consume in the U.S. is equivalent to the pollution created from driving 13.6 million cars for a year, according to a UCLA study.”
Pets contribute to greenhouse gases like us. Here’s how to reduce their carbon pawprint
“ Okin calculated that meat-eating by dogs and cats creates the equivalent of about 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, which has about the same climate impact as a year’s worth of driving from 13.6 million cars.”
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-truth-about-cats-and-dogs-environmental-impact#:~:text=Okin%20calculated%20that%20meat%2Deating%20by%20dogs%20and,worth%20of%20driving%20from%2013.6%20million%20cars.
Cook per day fuel
“In 2020, 79% of U.S. households prepared at least one hot meal at home each day, according to our 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS).”
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=53439
“One-quarter or one-third: how much of global emissions come from food?
It is nothing new that estimates of food emissions span a wide spectrum. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land reports a range from 10.8 and 19.1 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) emissions per year.3 That’s between 21% to 37% of global total emissions. Quite a big difference. We’ll soon see where these disagreements come from.”
https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food
Street lights per day fuel
“According to the most recent RECS, in 2020, electricity consumption for lighting accounted for about 6% (81 billion kilowatthours [kWh]) of electricity consumption in U.S. homes.”
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=99&t=3
Road maintenance per day fuel
“The CO2 emissions from the transportation sector took up over 24% of the total world energy-related emissions in 2020 (IEA, 2020b), and in China it accounted for about 9% of total emissions in 2019 (IEA, 2021). Among the CO2 emissions of the world transportation sector, road transport is the dominant part, accounting for 74% (IEA, 2020b). Therefore, the importance of road transport as a key area for carbon emission reduction is very high. Apart from the CO2 directly emitted from vehicle operations, emissions from the road infrastructure, including material production and transportation, road construction, maintenance, and recycling of roads, make up 5%–25% of total CO2 emissions from transport (Liu et al., 2017).”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095756422000587
Fuel. Few ill, fuhrer.
Fertilizer, pesticide, slaughter and dairy
“One of the main nutrients that plants need to grow is nitrogen. But plants can’t take in nitrogen from the air the way they can absorb carbon dioxide or oxygen. In the early 1900s, scientists invented a process to mass-produce a nitrogen-containing compound, ammonia, that plants can absorb from the soil. Today, ammonia is the second-most commonly produced chemical in the world, used in huge quantities as a very effective fertilizer.
This invention revolutionized farming, doubling the number of people that one acre of land could feed.2 But ammonia has to be made at a high pressure under high temperatures—meaning it takes a lot of energy to manufacture. Most of that energy comes from burning fossil fuels like coal and methane gas, which give off the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change. [..] nitrous oxide warms the planet 300 times as much as carbon dioxide. [….] Between manufacturing and use on farms, fertilizers today contribute an estimated 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.”
https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-change
“As global annual agricultural use of pesticides increased from 1.81 million metric tons in 1990 to 3.69 million metric tons in 2022 (a 104% increase over 3 decades, see Figure 1), there are increasing concerns that pesticides are contributing to negative health outcomes in exposed individuals, including those that are exposed occupationally as well as the general public who consume agricultural products (Petit and Vuillerme, 2025). In this review, we discuss some of the earliest evidence that many pesticides are hormonally active, and thus are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), developmental toxicants, and reproductive toxicants.”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12531173/
“nearly 80 percent of that farmland is devoted to livestock.”
https://woods.stanford.edu/news/meats-environmental-impact
“A new model suggests that phasing out animal agriculture over the next 15 years would have the same effect as a 68 percent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions through the year 2100.”
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2022/02/new-model-explores-link-animal-agriculture-climate-change
“Global food production is responsible for 35% of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) with the use of animals as a source for food, as well as livestock feed, responsible for almost 60% of all food production emissions.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667278223000603
“estimates indicate that net global greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land use were approximately 12 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent,[2] or about 21% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.”
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-overview
Personal hygiene products fuel
“In preparation for the fifth session in November 2024, the International Hub Against Plastic Pollution called attention to the polluting impact of single-use plastics, noting that annual production and use of 12 billion disposable menstrual management products globally contributes an estimated 245 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.9”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11865846/
Food waste per day Methane output per day
“Methane is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) at trapping heat in the atmosphere and is responsible for approximately 30% of the increase in global temperature since the Industrial Revolution”
“Roughly one-third of all food available for human consumption goes uneaten, both domestically and globally.”
“According to the EPA, municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions from human activities in the U.S. Food waste is the number one component in U.S. MSW landfills (24% in 2018). “
“In 2020, food waste was responsible for approximately 58 percent of the fugitive methane emissions from MSW landfills, emitting approximately 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) based on a 100-year global warming potential (GWP). The greenhouse gas emissions from landfilled food waste are equivalent to the annual emissions of 15 coal-fired power plants (or 7 million homes’ energy use). “
https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-06/epa_usda_methane_and_food_waste_fact_sheet.pdf
Sex and reproduction (birth control, birthing, pregnancy)
“Condoms have their ups and downs; while they stand as the only option to protect against STIs and come free of a doctor’s consultation, they fall short on pregnancy prevention effectiveness (at 82 percent) and waste creation. Their one-time usage leads to a definitively unsexy clogging of landfills, with about 10 billion condoms added per year. They also pose human rights issues through exploitive rubber production, although some companies are working to fix that. “
“The pill tops condoms through higher effectiveness (91 percent) and less physical waste. However, its main ingredient, synthetic estrogen, can contaminate our natural waterways, altering fish reproductive systems and damaging ecosystem dynamics. “
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/birth-control-for-mother-earth
“The healthcare sector globally contributes around 4.6% of greenhouse gas emissions, stemming from various sources such as hospitals, clinics, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and transportation linked to healthcare services [5]. “
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12448369/
“Excluding analgesia, the carbon footprint of a caesarean birth in the UK was 31.21 kgCO2e, compared with 12.47 kgCO2e for vaginal birth in hospital and 7.63 kgCO2e at home. In the Netherlands the carbon footprint of a caesarean was higher (32.96 kgCO2e), but lower for vaginal birth in hospital and home (10.74 and 6.27 kgCO2e, respectively). Emissions associated with analgesia for vaginal birth ranged from 0.08 kgCO2e (with opioid analgesia) to 237.33 kgCO2e (nitrous oxide with oxygen). Differences in analgesia use resulted in a lower average carbon footprint for vaginal birth in the Netherlands than the UK (11.64 versus 193.26 kgCO2e).”
https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1471-0528.17771
Monetary system (print, tally, stock market,, banking, wallet, etc)
‘Just 15 days of income generation for the top 0.1 percent of wealthy households in the United States creates as much carbon pollution as the income earned by the poorest 10 percent of the population over the course of a lifetime.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/this-study-calculated-the-carbon-emissions-of-getting-rich
“ bank financing for fossil fuel industries has continued to rise, reaching $6.9 trillion in 2023 (from the world’s 60 largest banks), an increase of $705 billion from 2022”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17583004.2025.2585893#d1e118
“We estimate that for 11 of the largest U.S.-based banks, the average estimated carbon intensity of lending is 0.24 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas emissions (tCO2- eq) per US$1,000 per year. This means that, on average, every US$1,000 you have in savings is roughly equivalent to the direct emissions generated by flying from New York to Seattle every year.11 For the largest four banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo – this figure is higher: 0.29 tCO2-eq per US$1,000 per year.”
https://drawdown.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Saving%20for%20the%20Planet_Drawdown%20Labs%20Report_0.pdf
Average new item bought, average energy to
“And in fact, across its life cycle, the average product results in carbon emissions of 6.3 times its own weight, according to a study done by Christoph Meinrenken, associate research scientist at the Earth Institute’s Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management.”
“One scientist found that 90 percent of fossil fuel companies’ emissions are a result of the products made from fossil fuels.”
“Meinrenken’s study found that 45 percent of a product’s total carbon emissions occurs upstream in the supply chain — in other words, from the sourcing of and type of raw materials that go into the product.”
Advertising fuel cost per day
“Reliable data on the energy consumption of online advertising are scarce. Simons and Pras (Citation2010) estimated that online advertising was responsible for 3.4% of the average computer’s total energy consumption while browsing the web. In 2016, online advertising consumed an estimated 106 TWh of energy worldwide and generated 60 million tons of CO2 emissions, with a wide confidence interval between 12 and 159 Mt of CO2e (Pärssinen et al. Citation2018). Good-loop’s carbon calculator (Good-Loop Citation2021), a platform for net-zero advertisements, estimates that the average online advertising campaign in the UK emits 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide. ”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02650487.2022.2140963#d1e356
Security and police cost in fuel per day
“Using this more robust methodology, crime in England and Wales in 2011 was shown to be responsible for the emission of approximately four million tCO2e: equivalent to the direct annual energy use of around 900,000 UK homes (Skudder et al. 2016). The study also demonstrated that burglary offences resulted in the largest proportion of the total footprint (30 per cent), due to the large number of burglaries that occur and the comparatively high amount of carbon associated with the replacement of stolen or damaged goods. Emissions arising from the criminal justice system also accounted for a large proportion of total emissions (21 per cent of all offences; 49 per cent of police-recorded offences). Homicide was found to have a very high carbon footprint per offence (over 70 tonnes CO2e) due to the emissions associated with a costly police investigation and long prison sentence served by the offender. However, due to the low rates of homicide, they only represented around 1 per cent of the total carbon footprint of crime.”
https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/58/2/351/3064487?login=false
Plastic and hormones: Endocrine blocking chemicals either give false positives by mimicking the shape of the specific hormone that shouldnfill the slot or elese by prevent hormones docking by being in the way.
https://www.beyondplastics.org/ask-a-scientist/plastics-hormones
Plastics ingrained can lead possibly to neirodegenerative diseases like alzheimers and Parkinson, and depression and anxiety
https://www.beyondplastics.org/fact-sheets/microplastics-in-brain
Concrete and cement footprint
Of course, notes Ulm, reducing the water-to-cement ratio for HPC also requires more cement. And depending on how that cement is produced, this can increase the material’s environmental impact. This is in part because when calcium carbonate is fired in a kiln to produce conventional cement, a chemical reaction occurs that produces carbon dioxide (CO2).
Another source of cement’s CO2 emissions come from heating cement kilns. This heating must be done using fossil fuels because of the extremely high temperatures required in the kiln (2,700 F). The electrification of kilns is being studied, but it is currently not technically or economically feasible.
cement contributes around 8 percent of global emissions.
https://news.mit.edu/2020/explained-cement-vs-concrete-understanding-differences-and-sustainability-opportunities-0403