The Story of Stuff

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Coolest recycling website ever.
CHECK IT OUT!

A few fun "Did you know?"s to get you started...

-50% of our (America's) federal tax money goes to military funding.

-1/3 of the planet's natural resource space has already been consumed.

-40% of the U.S's waterways have become undrinkable.

-In the Amazon rain forests we lose about 2,000 trees a minute. 2000 A MINUTE!

-Food with the highest level of toxic contaminants:breast milk.

If this doesn't scare you green, I don't know what will.

Save your planet. It'll thank you later :)

New Years Resolutions for 2009: Tinted GREEN

1. Don't run the water while you brush your teeth

2. Invest in a re-usable waterbottle

3. Use less paper and plastic cutlery

4. Shorten your showers

5. Unplug your cellphone/Ipod/laptop charger when it's charged to completion

6. Pick up trash you see in common areas (as long as it's not super grody)

7. Turn your computer off instead of putting it in sleep mode

8. Reuse aluminum foil when cooking

9. Recycle ALL paper--as always :)

Happy New Year--let it be an eco-friendly one!

The best kind of paper...

...is RECYCLED PAPER

Stats:
- Paper made from recycled paper uses 70% less energy
- 75% of each tree that is cut down for paper is not used in a paper product
- One ton of paper requires the use of 98 tons of various resources


**Sorry about the short post this week, it's exam cramming time over here. Insanium in the cranium!

That's a Wrap!

Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. And one of the most wasteful. I’m all for the spirit of giving, it’s the wrapping of the gifts that I have an issue with. Wrapping paper is so crazy wasted in this part of the world. Here are the shocking facts:

- The gift wrap industry now accounts for $2.6 billion annually in retail sales

- As much as half of the 85 million tons of paper products Americans consume every year goes toward packaging, wrapping and decorating goods.

- Additional food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons - it adds up to an extra 1 million tons a week to our landfills.

- Wrapping paper and shopping bags alone account for about 4 million tons of trash annually in the United States.

- From Thanksgiving to New Years Day, household waste increases by over 25 percent.

Reasons Wrapping Paper Can Be a Wee Bit Difficult to Recycle...
#1 Reason--many of the materials it's made out of are non-recyclable!
Rest of Reasons:
- Wrapping paper is often dyed and laminated.
- It can contain non-paper additives such as gold and silver coloring, glitter and plastics.
- It usually has tape on it from being wrapped around a gift.

Temporary Solution: Wrap with newspaper, recycled paper, or other reused/reusable materials (example: gift bags, etc).

Little known fact: If every American family wrapped three presents in reused materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.

Save wrapping paper. Save your planet. It’ll thank you later :)


Sources: Earth911, Eco-Chick.com

Did you know?

(Some random facts about recycling that you might not yet know about recycling and why it's so a FAB-U-LOUS thing to do)

…About 40% of all the pure water in your house is flushed down the toilet.

…One aluminum can when recycled, can produce enough energy to run a TV set for three hours. That’s one Ugly Betty and two Grey’s Anatomys!

...Reusing a grocery bag for a shopping trip can save about 60,000 trees.

…Every day, more than 20,000,000 Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped. This involves 133 square miles of tinfoil, all of which is recyclable.

…If you walk a mile along the average highway in the United States you will see approximately 1457 pieces of litter.

…Each week’s Sunday paper is responsible for the loss of 500,000 trees.

…Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!
That’s one hundred acres every sixty seconds!

…Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper per year--about 580 pounds per person.

Gooodness! That’s enough to make my head spin!
Please please please recycle.
Save your planet. It’ll thank you later :)


Sources: Recycling Revolution, Buzzle.com, Resourceful Schools

The Great Eight

Here are eight recycling facts for all you eco-sexy readers. One for each day of the week and then an extra one for good luck.

1. If you recycle an aluminum can it can save enough energy to watch television for 3 hours.

2. If everyone read just their Sunday paper online and there were no more paper versions made, 500,000 trees could be saved per week.

3. If we were to save all the wood and paper that we toss into the trash each year, the combined amount would be enough to heat 50 million homes for up to 20 years.

4. In the United States alone, over 25 million beverage bottles made of plastic are thrown away every sixty minutes.

5. If we were to wait for a glass bottle to decompose after throwing it away today, we would be waiting approximately 4000 years.

6. Glass and aluminum can be reused an unlimited amount of times.

7.By recycling one glass bottle, you can run an 100 watt light bulbs for 3 to 4 hours.

8. If all the paper that American businesses generate in just one day we laid out, that paper would be enough to circle the Earth about 20 times.

RECYCLE PEOPLE!
Save the planet. It’ll thank you later : )

Sources: GO GREEN Lifestyle

Paper or Plastic?

How about neither. You know how they say youth is wasted on the young? Well paper and plastic are wasted on the people. Here are some shocking facts that might make you think twice before reaching for that paper plate and plastic utensils.

2. Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. Breaking that down, that's over one million per minute. Billions of those bags end up as litter each year.

3. Recycling one ton of paper saves about seventeen trees.

4. A plastic cup can take anywhere between fifty to eighty years to decompose.

5. Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every HOUR.

6. Eighty seven percent of Americans have access to curbside or drop-off paper recycling programs. That's about 268 MILLION people. Two hundred and sixty eight people who could go green, but might not.

Save paper. Save plastic. Save the planet. It'll thank you later :)


Sources: Newly Green, The Paper Project, Earth 911, Greenfeet