Random facts 4

Natural resources

 * Almost 40 million people are involved in fisheries globally and 90 percent of these are employed in small-scale artisanal fishing. Source: FOEI's The Tyranny of Free Trade: wasted natural wealth and lost livelihoods, December 2005, www.foei.org/publications/index.html

Participatory budgeting

 * Participatory budgeting, first developed in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1988 to engage the urban poor in setting community-level budgets, had spread to some 200 - 250 municipalities in Brazil by 2006 and been adapted in cities worldwide. Source:Worldwatch Institute
 * Between 2000 and 2006, the total number of cities with participatory budgets grew from 200 to roughly 1,200. Source:Worldwatch Institute / Community involvement

Road Safety

 * Each year, traffic accidents kill about 1.2 million people and injure up to 50 million more. Source: Worldwatch Institute

Reduce, reuse, repair & recycle

 * Around one and a half tonnes of packaging is thrown away every second in England alone and makes up over 40% of the waste disposed of by households. The amount of waste being produced is increasing by 3% a year and will cost more than £2.5billion to collect and dispose of this year alone. Source: The Local Government Association (LGA), July 2006
 * The UK (around 27million tonnes) sends about twice as much rubbish into landfill as France (around 13million tonnes), and more than twice the amount that Germany does (around 10million tonnes). Source: Local Government Association, January 2007. Figures for municipal waste in the European Union taken from 2003/4 statistics as they are the most recent comparable figures.

Rural issues

 * 79% of (UK) respondents said they visited the countryside for leisure purposes at least a few times a year or more frequently. 19% said they visited once a week, 10% once a fortnight, 16% once a month, 9% once a quarter, 25% said a few times a year. 8% said they never visited the countryside, 8% said less than once a year, 4% only once a year. Source: CPRE