Ever wonder how many greenhouse gases are in our atmosphere? Now you can get a real-time number every time you pass 33rd Street and 7th Avenue thanks to Deutsche Bank's carbon counter billboard. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did the math and currently 3.64 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide is in our atmosophere, with another 800 being added every second. That's right, every second.This is the highest level of greenhouse gases measured in 800,000 years and you can credit a portion of the demise to bottled water. According to the Container Recycling Institute, supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for a year requires more than 47 million gallons of oil, a cost of 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide. New York City alone, uses 856 million plastic bottles each year.
One of the reasons Deutsche Bank put the carbon counter up is to spark public debate on ways to reduce emissions and stop global warming (the other reason is PR for their DB Climate Change Advisers). We also think it's a good motivation tool to encourage New Yorkers to make small changes to lower their carbon footprints. One easy change? Making the extra effort to find free water on the go so there's no need to buy bottled water. And for the record, the sign is eco-friendly as it's illuminated with 41,000 LED light bulbs to keep its carbon footprint low.
Photo by Jen Chung via Gothamist
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