Question

The average household uses 6 bags of sugar per household per month. Each bag of sugar weighs 2 pounds. Assume that that there are 2 people in each household on average and that the US population is 309 million. How many pounds of sugar does the US consume per year?

Answer 1

We are given that the consumption of sugar per household per month is the following:

`\frac{6\text{Bags}}{H* m}`

Where "H" represents Household and "m" represents months. Now we are given that each bag weighs 2 pounds, therefore, we can convert the previous measurement to pounds per household per month by multiplying by 2:

`\frac{6\text{Bags}}{H* m}*(2pounds)/(bag)=\frac{12\text{pounds}}{H* m}`

We get 12 pounds per household per month. Now we will convert Household to people knowing that each household has 2 people:

`(12pounds)/(H* m)*(1H)/(2people)=(6pounds)/(people* month)`

We get 6 pounds per person per month. Now, since the population is 309 million we can determine the total amount of sugar consumed in a period of 1 month:

`(6pounds)/(people* month)*309000000\text{ people=}\frac{1854000000\text{pounds}}{month}`

We get 1854 million pounds per month. Since we are asked about the number of pounds per year we convert the number of months to years using the fact that 12 months is a year:

`\frac{1854000000\text{pounds}}{month}*\frac{12month}{1\text{year}}=\frac{22248000000\text{ pounds}}{year}`

Therefore, the consumption of sugar in the US is 22248 million pounds per year.