I have been looking over some of the articles that have been written since I started this job. The next few articles will contain information I have collected from different sources, including Oberlin College in Ohio, during the past several years. Please think about these statements and how you can possibly change some of your habits to become a better steward of our planet by reducing, reusing, and recycling.
Wash full loads of clothes. Washing machines use about 15% of your house’s water… 32-59 gallons per cycle.
Glass never wears out. It can be recycled over, and over, and over again. The machine in the Twin Cities that separates the recyclables we send there can tell the difference between clear, amber, and green glass bottles and sends them to their respective bins.
If a family of four takes five minute showers each day, they will use more than 700 gallons of water each week. That is a three- year supply of drinking water for one person.
Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas.
Americans use 100,000,000.. that’s one hundred million.. tin/steel cans every day. I am quite sure a few of these contained cream of chicken, mushroom, or celery used in making a variety of Minnesota Hot Dishes.
Forty percent of the pure water you use in your home is flushed down the toilet.
There is an increased use of batteries of all types and sizes during the holidays, according to the EPA. Approximately 40% of battery sales occur during the holiday season from Thanksgiving to Christmas. With that in mind, please remember to recycle those rechargeable batteries when they wear out.
Almost half the energy we use in our homes goes to heating and cooling. Adjust your thermostat when you leave the house, as well as at night. You may also want to consider installing a programmable thermostat that will save you money while it saves energy.
One ton of recycled oil filters produces 1700 pounds of high quality steel.
Some of the elements that are found in many recyclable batteries are cadmium, mercury, copper, zinc, lead, manganese, nickel, and lithium.
We save 17 trees for each ton of newspaper we recycle.
The average American spends eight full months of his or her life opening junk mail.
The 36,000,000,000 aluminum cans that find their way into landfills each year have a scrap value of more than 600,000,000.
In 1865, an estimated 10,000 hogs roamed New Your City, eating garbage. Today one out of every six trucks in New York is a garbage truck.
If every American household recycled just one out of every 10 plastic bottles they used, we’d keep 200,000,000 pounds of plastic out of landfills every year.
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