Pictures for words...

1 picture = 1000 words

from Philanthropy 2173 by Lucy Bernholz

We all know the old saw about a picture being worth a thousand words. As Chris Jordan's new photography exhibit shows, that same picture might also be worth:

• The 8 million trees harvested monthly for US mail order catalogs;
• 2 million plastic bottles used every 5 minutes;
• 11,000 jet trails over the US every 8 hours;
• 426,000 cell phones thrown out daily;
• 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every 5 seconds; or
  
• 29,569 handguns, one for every gun death in the US in 2004.

Check out the photos. If you are in New York between June 14 and July 31 check it out in person. The photos really do justice to these sobering statistics.

If only he had a picture of the 260 billion dollars Americans gave to charity last year (at least some of which was intended to address the problems shown in the other photos).

The picture above depicts eight million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees harvested in the US every month to make the paper for mail order catalogs.