Eco Tips
RECYCLE!!!Find programs near you; there should be lots of options. |
| 101. | Stop Junk Mail -- The junk mail Americans receive in just one day is not only a nuisance, but could produce enough energy to heat a quarter of a million homes! If you saved up all the unwanted junk mail for one year, you would have the equivalent to one and a half trees, which would add up to 100 million trees every year in just the United States. To help stop junk mail, write to: Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, 11 West 42nd St., PO Box 3861, New York, NY 10163-3861. By writing to them, you can reduce junk mail by up to 75%. You can recycle the rest of the junk mail you receive. |
| 102. | Home Appliances -- Did you know that America's refrigerators consume 7% of the nation's electricity, which is the equivalent to more than 50% of the power generated by nuclear plants. To allow your fridge to run more efficiently, you should clean the condenser coils annually. By raising the temperature in your refrigerator by 10 degrees, you can save 25% of your energy. With air conditioners, you should clean or replace filters each month. This will save electricity and money. |
| 103. | Recharge Your Batteries -- Batteries contain heavy metals, such as mercury and cadmium, which have become a major source of contamination in dumpsites. They either break apart and are released into the soil or are incinerated and the deadly heavy metals are released into the air. Did you know that the average annual use of mercury in batteries is over what the government limits in dump sites by four times? Here is what you can do to help: use batteries which are rechargeable. Recycle alkaline batteries if you can. They can extract the mercury and cadmium for reuse. |
| 104. | Shopping Bags -- Plastic bags are not biodegradable even if they say they are they do not decompose fully. Also the ink is made up of cadmium, and is highly toxic when it is released. Whereas paper bags are reusable and biodegradable. However supermarkets use paper that has never been recycled before and they always say "recyclable" not "recycled". Here is what you can do: if your purchase is small don't take any bag, this alone could save hundreds of millions of bags. Bring a cloth bag when you shop, or use string bags. |
| 105. | Beware of Your Showers -- If a four person family showers each day for 5-minutes, in one week they would use 700 gallons of water. This is enough water for a person to live off of for three years. You can buy either an aerated, or a non-aerated showerhead, which cuts your water output by 50%. The aerated is as if not more powerful than a regular showerhead, it mixes air with the water. The non-aerated showerhead pulses, but you get a good sprat and it can be called a "massage showerhead". With a family of four taking 5-minute showers, with a low-flow showerhead you can save at least 14,000 gallons of water a year. So if 100,000 families installed low-flow showerheads we would save 1.4 billion gallons. |
| 106. | Recycle Your Motor Oil -- In the United States we use about a billion gallons of motor oil each year, and about 350 million of it ends up in the environment. About 2.1 million tons of oil is deposited up in our rivers and streams every year. Motor Oil can seep down into our ground water supply. One quart contaminates 250,000 gallons of water. If you get your oil changed at a gas station make sure they will recycle your oil. If you change the oil yourself, take it to a gas station or oil-changing outlet, which recycles oil. They will take yours, but you will have to pay anywhere from a quarter to a dollar (the cost for having it picked up). |
| 107. | Use Fluorescent Lighting -- Lighting results in 1/5 of the electricity consumed by the U.S. By using electricity we are contributing to global problems by making power plants and industrial business generate more polluting emissions. Using a fluorescent light bulb, which doesn't flicker or hum, is much more efficient than an incandescent bulb. They last longer and use 1/4 the amount of energy. A normal incandescent bulb lasts 750 hours but a fluorescent bulb will give off the same amount of light yet last for 7,500 to 10,000 hours with 1/3 of the wattage. Also within a fluorescent lightbulb's lifetime it will stop 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere, if it is substituted for the traditional bulb. Even though fluorescent lights are initially more expensive (around $15) it will take 13 traditional bulbs to last for the same amount of time (figure the savings on that!). Here is an interesting fact. By installing a single fluorescent light bulb in 100 million households in America, you would save the energy equivalent of all of the energy that is generated by a nuclear power plant running full time, over the course of one year. |
| 108. | Reuse whatever you can, including aluminum pie tins, glassware, plastic cutlery and aluminum foil. |
| 109. | Reuse glass bottles. Buy a glass bottle and use it for a long time! It will not rot or go bad like a plastic bottle will. You could decrease the amount of water bottles in the garbage dumps if you use 1 glass bottle instead of 30 plastic water bottles per week. Glass bottles are also healthy! Plastic is not. All different types of chemicals get released into your water from the plastic, and even more if you squeeze it! |
| 110. | Plant a tree in your neighborhood or near your home; They suck up harmful CO2 gases. If you can't plant one, try potted plants. |
Not only should you recycle, but buy products that are recycled. By purchasing these products, you are helping to conserve natural resources, and to protect the environment.
