A Little Bit Goes a Long Way.....

Hello Everyone!

Listed below are a handful of “Did You Know” facts. Some may shock or concern you, but we hope each will inspire you. Most folks don’t realize that it takes very little effort to actually change the course of direction our planet is headed. Some believe that the environmental issues we are facing are too vast--almost not worth the trouble of attempting to tackle.

We believe each individual can make a difference and we also believe it is our responsibility to do our part. With every move we make, we are someway affecting the Earth and leaving our legacy. One idea we live by is simply asking ourselves “How do you want to go down in history”?

Did you know……

•Americans throw away 25 billion Styrofoam coffee cups every year, and 2.5 million plastic beverage bottles every hour.

•Americans throw away about 40 billion soft drink cans and bottles every year. Placed end to end, they would reach to the moon and back nearly 20 times.

•If you throw away 2 aluminum cans, you waste more energy than 1,000,000,000 (one billion) of the world's poorest people use a day.

•About one third of what an average American throws out is packaging.

•More than 1,000,000,000 (one billion) trees are used to make disposable diapers every year.

•The average American makes about 3.5 pounds of trash a day.

•In a year, the average American uses as much wood in the form of paper as the average resident of the developing world burns as fuel.

•About 110 million Americans live in areas with levels of air pollutants the federal government considers to be harmful.

•Since there is little oxygen underground, where we bury our garbage, to help bacteria eat the garbage, almost nothing happens to it. Scientists have dug into landfills and found ears of corn still intact after 20 years, and newspapers still readable after 30.

•The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.

•Each gallon of gas used by a car contributes about 19 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. For a single car driving 1,000 miles a month, that adds up to 120 tons of CO2 a year.

•Using recycled paper for one print run of the Sunday edition of the New York Times would save 75,000 trees.

•By turning the heat down, Americans could save more than 500,000 barrels of oil each day--that's over 21,000,000 gallons.

•Each year, 40 million acres of tropical rainforests--an area larger than the state of California--are destroyed through logging or burning.

•Only 10 percent of the 35,000 pesticides introduced since 1945 have been tested for their effects on people.

•The typical American home uses about 300 gallons of water a day.

•99.5 percent of all fresh water on Earth is in icecaps and glaciers.

•Americans dump 16 tons of sewage into their waters--every minute of every day.

•Although water covers two-thirds of the surface of the Earth, all the fresh water in lakes, streams, and rivers represents only one-hundredth of the Earth's total water.

•Each year, 1 million sea birds, 100,000 marine mammals, and 50,000 fur seals are killed as the result of eating or being strangled in plastic.

•Eighty-four percent of a typical household's waste--including food scraps, yard waste, paper, cardboard, cans, and bottles--can be recycled.

•It takes only one-twentieth as much raw materials to grow grains, fruits, and vegetables as it does to raise animals for meat.

•A 1/32" leak in a faucet can waste up to 6,000 gallons of water a month, or 72,000 gallons a year.

•America's refrigerators use about 7 percent of the nation's total electricity consumption--the output of about 25 large power plants.

•By turning the heat down, Americans could save more than 500,000 barrels of oil each day--that's over 21,000,000 gallons.

•A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to two million gallons of fresh water.

•Making a new can from scratch uses the uses the energy equal to half a can of gasoline.

•In one minute, 50 acres of rainforest are destroyed.

•On average, a person in the US uses energy two times more than a person in Japan or West Germany does, and 50 times more than a person in India.

•About 90% of the energy used in lighting a standard (incandescent) light bulb is lost as heat.

•Air conditioning uses 10 times more energy than a fan; therefore, it creates 10 times the pollutants.

•It takes half the output of the Alaskan pipeline to heat the air that escapes from all the homes in the US during a year.

•Cars and pick-up trucks are responsible for about 20% of the carbon dioxide released into the air.

•There are about 500 million automobiles on the planet, burning an average of 2 gallons of fuel a day. Each gallon releases 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air.

•About 80% of our trash goes to landfills, 10% is incinerated, and 10% is recycled.

We would love to hear your feedback on this posting. Let us know if any of these facts took you by surprise, or what you do in way of helping the environment, giving viewers helpful tips of your own.

Until next week,
Kelly