I'm reading this incredible book by Annie Leonard called 'The Story of Stuff'. It's based off her youtube video by the same title. There are too many crazy facts/quotes in here to pass up.. so here we go:

need to add the intro/trees/beginning-water notes

• "Did you know that in the United States we spend more than $20 billion a year on our lawns?" (14)
• "In the United States, the lawn, or "turfgrass", is the single largest irrigated crop, three times larger than corn. Simply by replanting lawns with native plants that use less water and allow more rainwater to seep into the soil, rather than run off into drainage systems, U.S. homeowners could drastically reduce their water use at home." (14)
• "Consider the fact that paper-making plants use 300 to 400 tons of water to make 1 ton of paper, if none of the water is reused or recirculated." (14)
• "Growing the cotton for one T-shirt requires 256 gallons of water." (14)
• "To get your morning cup of coffee, 36 gallons of water are used to grow, produce, package, and ship the beans." (14)
• "Producing a typical U.S. car requires more than fifty times its weight in water, or more than 39, 000 gallons." (14-15)
• "Of all the water on earth, 97.5 percent is salt water; and most of the 2.5 percent that is fresh water is frozen in the icecaps or so deep underground in aquifers that we can't reach it. Only about 1 percent of the world's water is accessible for direct human use. This includes the water we see in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs as well as those underground sources that are shallow enough to be tapped affordably. Only this 1 percent is regularly renewed by rain and snowfall and is available to us on a sustainable basis. So we're in trouble if we use too much." 15
• "Already, about one-third of the world's population lives in countries that are experiencing water stress. Despite all our technological know-how, at least one in six people doesn't have access to safe drinking water. Every day, thousands of people - mostly children - die from preventable diseases contracted because they do not have access to clean water." 15