Basic HTML Version
July
1971
What Cities
Doto Us
( Continued from page 8)
ship. The Princess Italia, for instance,
will stock away about 75,000 pounds of
food for a 14-day cruise containing 420
passengers and 250 crew, a total of just
under 10,000 passenger-days.
Imagine what a megalopolis of 10
million must "ship in" each
day
-
approximately a thousand times what
the Princess Italia ship loads for a 14-
day cruise!
On an average day, Mr. Average
Citizen wants this varied shopping list
filled:
5 ounces of beef
3 ounces of pork, lamb, and
veal
Y2
ounce of fish
2 ounces of poultry
1
egg
Y2
ounce cheese
16 ounces (2 cups) milk
2y
2
ounces butter and other fats
and oils
6 ounces fresh fruit, juices, and
processed fruit
7 ounces vegetables, exduding
home grown vegetables
6 ounces potatoes
1
ounce melon
4
ounces refined sugar
5 ounces wheat products
2 ounces other grain products
6 ounces beer
2 ounces wine and other spirits
8 cigarettes or cigars, and
1 cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa
Eveo discounting the coffee, ciga–
rettes, and beer, that's an average of
4 pounds per person per da
y
(
one full
pound being milk, the other three
pounds being solids). This is the aver–
age consumption per person (all ages
considered) in the United States,
accordiog to the Agriculture Depart–
ment's quarterly publication,
National
Food Si111ation.
Multiply this by a family of five, and
you
have 20 pounds of food to be trans–
ported, marketed, bought, prepared, and
eaten daily. Multiply to the size of Ne"lll
York City, and the number reaches an
The
PLAIN TRUTH
astronomical 16,000 tons of food
daily.'
Just to provide every Ncw Yorkcr
(or Southern Californian, for that
matter) with his 5 ounces of beef and
2 ounces of poultry, requires a
daily
slaughtering, cleaning, dressing, freez–
ing, and delivering of 1,000 head of
cattle and 300,000 chickens!
Sorne estimates say New York City
has a week's surplus of food at best. A
transportation strike, or any similar
breakdowo in commerce, and the city
could die. Few consider how vulnerable
we urbanites actually are.
More Input: Fuels, Mioerals,
and Natural Resources
After polishing off a quick breakfast
and reading a few pages of the
Times
(the all-oight vigil of producing a
morning newspaper is another story in
itself), Mr. Average Citizen turns the
ignition key in his car. The engine
responds.
F11el power.
Where does that fuel come from?
If
Mr. A.
C.
drives 12 miles to work (a
conservative estímate), he burns about
one galloo of gasoline; on the return
trip, a second gallon. His wife burns a
like amount on her daily errands.
On ao average day, each citizen burns
2 pounds of motor fuel, 5
y
2
pounds of
natural gas, 5Y
2
pounds of oil, and 6
pounds of coa!. Total : 19 pounds, most
of it consumed by the industries of the
city, oot Mr. Average Citizen himself.
But nevertheless,
his
share is 19
pounds.
(Scientific American,
"Thc
Metabolism of Cities," Sept. 1965, p.
180.)
But where does all this fuel come
from? Nearly 100 pounds for a family
of five. The motor fue! and much of the
oil comes in the oil vaos from local refi–
neries. The coal comes in endless coa!
cars speeding across the nation's rails.
(It takes a string of 240 full coal
cars daily just
to
power the city of New
York for a day.) New York's
tot~l
daily fuel needs - 76,000
tom
of
fuels.
That's not all the resources Mr. Aver–
age Citizen consumes daily. Induded on
this list of industrial minerals are items
he probably never directly uses, but is
nevertheless respoosible for.
50 pounds of sand, grave!, and
stone
41
10 pounds of clay, lime, cement,
gypsum, salt, etc.
5 pounds of iron ore and ferrous–
alloy ores
2 pounds of wood, paper, aod
natural fibers
Yz
pound of non-ferrous ores and
metals.
The total of such minerals
n10s
at
67Yz
pounds per day, a barely liftable
quantity. But New York City's total
share runs 270,000 tons daily, a hercu–
lean task for local commerce and
industry.
The total daily input for Mr. Average
Citizen, in just these four basic areas, is:
4
pounds food, 19 pounds fue!, 67
pounds minerals, and about 1250
pounds of water ( direct city use only).
For New York City in a day? 16,000
tons of food, 76,000 tons of fuels, 270,-
000 tons of minerals, and 5,000,000
tons of water! A good day's work for
the many hundreds of thousands
employed in New York's servicc indus–
tries.
Garbage
In -
Garbage Out
The city is a vast maw into which a
country's life blood is reverently
poured. And such gargantuan con–
sumptíon habits have a shudderiog,
enormous impact
on
the environment,
and the country as a whole.
We've seen what goes
into
a city each
day. Now look at what is poured out.
In Los Angeles, it's obvious ( smog can
be seen 200 miles away), but most of
the city effiuence is quite invisible,
including most air pollution.
The 1250 pounds of water used by
Mr. Average Citizen is quickly trans–
formed into about 1000 pounds of sew–
age. The discarded packaging of his
food and other items produces 4 pounds
of solid waste daily. Aod bis burning of
fuels produces one pound of carbon
monoxide, and one additional pound of
the four otber major air pollutants.
New York City produces slightly
more than the national average of all
these pollutants: 1280 pounds of sew–
age per person, 5 pounds of solid
trash, and slightly over 2 pounds
of air pollution. The daily totals for
"Fume City"? Over 5 rnillion tons of
sewage, 20,000 tons of solid wastes,
and 16,000 tons of smog. And the