Soul Economy

In checking out the dates for Clean Up Australia this year, which by the way is 2 March, I came across these statistics:

Australians are among the highest producers of waste, per person, in the world.
An estimated 7 billion cigarette butts end up in Australian waterways, streets and parklands each year.
80 million plastic bags are dumped [...]

In my recent readings I came across the following statistics about America which I find frightening when you consider that they are regarded as THE leading world power:
“Giving: How Each of us Can Change the World”
(Bill Clinton, 2007)

In 2004, the US Department of Agriculture said that almost 12% of American households – 13.5 million – [...]

Being Anti-Poverty Week, I thought it pertinent to highlight further shocking facts published in the Make Poverty History booklet:

Each year, 17 million people die of diseases that we know how to cure.
It is estimated that if the price of the 10 most important tropical commodities such cocoa, sugar and cotton, had risen with real inflation, [...]

I can understand the concern that Bono has about the situation with AIDS in Africa. Some of the statistics in the Make Poverty History booklet, that I have outlined below, are frightening!

Over 3 million people died from AIDS in 2004 of which almost 80% were in sub-Saharan Africa. That amounts to 8,493 people dying from [...]

I came across the following appalling statistics in the recent McKinsey & Company report “Shaping the New Rules of Competition: UN Global Compact Participant Mirror” in July 2007:

In the Asia-Pacific region almost 1 child out of 5 between the ages of 5 and 14 is in the workforce. In the Sub-Saharan Africa that figure is [...]

A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald highlighted the results from an ABS survey, revealing some interesting stats.
The good news is:

More than 1/3 of people partook in unpaid work for community organisations in 2006 compared to less than 1/4 in 1995
Volunteer hours have risen from 512 million hours to 713 million hours — a [...]

In reading the Make Poverty History booklet I purchased recently at the Oxfam Shop, I came across a few questions from the quiz in the preface which really made me stop and think………which by the way I expect it is meant to:

Do you think it’s wrong that 50,000 people die of poverty every day?
Do you [...]

I recently visited the Earth from Above exhibition to help nourish my passion for photography. The photos by Yann Arthus-Bertrand are fabulous! However, at the same time, some are very disturbing. But what was even more disturbing were the facts listed under each photo of which I thought to highlight some of them:

In Australia, for [...]