The merriments were celebrated, the gifts were unwrapped, and the new year was rang. With the Holiday season in our rear view mirror, GiftZip.com fixed its sights on the amount of waste that accumulates during the gift-giving season. According to the environmental experts at Plenty Magazine, each year 75 million lbs of PVC is dumped into landfills due to plastic gift card waste, a good portion of which is originally purchased during the Holidays. We’ve compiled a list of comparisons to give you a better idea of exactly how much waste that is– we think you’ll be shocked. The amount of plastic gift card waste that ends up in landfills each year is roughly the same as:
1. Hurling 8,720 2008 Hummer H2’s into the nearest landfill or driving nearly a third of all Hummers sold in the year 2008 straight from the dealership parking lot to the scrap yard.
2. 34,090,909 8 week old kittens
3. The weight of roughly 125 Boeing 7/47 Jets.
4. 4,870 adult African elephants
5. 166 Statue of Liberty’s
6. 300 million medium Burger King French Fries or 108 billion calories
7. 227,963 10 minute showers
8. 24,300,000,000 paper clips
9. 50 million iPads (Wi-Fi Model)
10. 53,571,429 Snuggies
11. 92,307,692 Partridges without pear trees
Lesson learned. Those pesky little plastic gift cards can add up to a whole ton (or multiple tons) of weight. No kittens were harmed in the making of this article. The Snuggies broke their fall. No partridges were forced from their pear trees.
Photo Attribution: Thomas Doerfer (Hummer H2), Jan Arkesteijn (Elephants), Fasil Getachew (Boeing Jet), Eldar Kamalov (Statue of Liberty), Matt McGee (French Fries), Loretin (paper clips), ColKorn1982 (Kitten), Todd Dailey (Ipads), Stannate (snuggies), Brandon Daniel (Partridge), Hollywood Row (calculate)
Numbers used: 1 Gallon = 8.23 lbs, 5 minutes of showering = 20 gallons, average adult elephant weight = 15,400 lbs, Medium Burger King French Fries = 4 oz, Hummer H2 = 8,600 lbs, statue of liberty = 450,000 lbs, Paper clip = 1.4 g, 1 pound = 453.6 grams, 8 week old kitten= 2.2 lbs, Ipad (wi-fi model) = 1.5 lbs, snuggie= 1.4 lbs, partridge = 13 oz, Burger King french fries = 360.0 calories