38 million
Animals smuggled out of Brazil each year to supply the black market. Worldwide, the value of the illegal trade in animals is now thought to be second only to the drugs trade
14 million
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Homes whose lights, toasters and air-conditioning systems were powered by wind turbines for the first time last year. The world uses 10 times as much electricity generated by wind power as it did a decade ago
316,000
Boeing 737s that could have been produced from the 7 million tonnes of metal cans thrown away by Americans during the 1990s. Most of the cans ended up in landfill sites
7000
The daily death toll from malaria. Most are African children. Only four drugs developed by the pharmaceutical industry in the past 20 years have been designed to combat the disease
480
Polio cases worldwide last year, a dramatic fall from the 350,000 cases recorded just 14 years ago, before a worldwide immunisation programme
103
Bird species known to have disappeared since 1800. The extinction rate is thought to be 50 times the 鈥渘atural鈥� rate of species loss
15
US dollars spent each year per citizen on municipal services such as roads, water supply, sewers and garbage collection by an average African city. European and American cities average $2800 per head
3
Tonnes of waste produced by mining enough metal for a single gold ring