As many of you know April is Green Month and we like to take the opportunity here on the site to focus on ideas, tips and tricks on how we all can incorporate some green living into our daily lives. It doesn’t have to be a big commitment, think baby steps.
We hope that you will walk away with just a couple of things that you can do from now on that will lessen your impact on the planet. Who knows, some of these changes might even save you some green in the long run… More on that to come!
We save a lot of energy and natural resources by producing things out of recycled material instead of virgin materials.
Did you know that by recycling 1 aluminum you can save enough energy to light up a room for 20 hours with a 100-watt light bulb, or use your laptop for 3 hours, or kick back and watch television for 2 hours.. Just one teeny little can.
Being green, recycling and caring about our environment is often seen as a left wing inspired hippie movement but who doesn’t want clean air to breathe? I know I do. Take a look at these statistics and see where you can make even the smallest change (think 1 can) to help us all breathe a little easier.
- Plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kills over 1 million sea animals every year
- An aluminum can would still be recognizable as a can in 500 years; a plastic bag would take more than 1,000 years to begin to decompose; and a glass bottle would take more than 4,000 years to break down.
- Worldwide, annually, we consume 500 billion plastic bags, which required 60 million barrels of oil to make.
- Americans consume more than 1 million plastic bags per minute
- Junk mail creates 2.1 million tons of solid waste; consumes 28 billion gallons of fresh water in production; and requires over 350,000 dump trucks to haul away… every year.
- Did you know, the Hershey Company in the US produces about 20,000,000 kisses each day using 133 square miles of aluminum to wrap them in; this material is recyclable and most of it ends up in the trash rather than the recycle bin.
- The United States in the world’s largest trash producing country with more than 1,600 pounds of trash per person per year.
Great ideas and motivating facts Angie! Its so true, that any little action can make a huge difference in the long run! I hope Birmingham area mommies are getting inspired, gearing up, and making whatever positive changes they can! Happy Earth Month!
I loved the Hershey Kisses wrapper stat — something so little..
I agree! I never would have thought about that! But it makes such a great point- there is so much that we use on a daily basis that can be recycled or composted! Sometimes it’s the little things that can really get our minds moving in the right direction!