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While in college, I took a class called Quantitative Aspects of Global and Environmental Problems. In short, we learned how to assess the validity of numbers, statements, tables, maps, and graphs like those listed at a website on recycling facts I recently visited.

While I’m sure that many of these ‘facts’ are based off of academically based research, there are many qualitative factors that could go into a statement like: “During the time it takes you to read this sentence, 50,000 12-ounce aluminum cans are made.”

There are many concerns with a statement like this. If so many cans are made in a short time, than the various amounts of time it takes different people to read would drastically effect the number of cans produced.

I timed myself reading the sentence, and it took me 3.94 seconds to read it silently and 4.87 seconds to read it out loud. Let’s say it then takes 4 seconds to read the sentence silently. That would mean that (50,000/4) 12,500 cans are made per second. That means that (.87 x 12500) 10,875 more cans were made when I read the statement out loud. There’s a big difference between 50,000 cans and 60,875 cans. In fact, thats a 21.75% increase.

Then there’s the fact that we don’t know how where or when he or she got this rate of production in the first place.

I’m not trying to pick on this website, and certainly not recycling, but we should be skeptical of ‘facts’ published like this.

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