“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” – Cree Native American Proverb
In celebration of Earth Day, I’ve decided to little “save the earth” features this week. So, let’s start off with easy ways to do our part.
+ Decline your ATM receipts
“Receipts from 8 billion ATM transactions every year are one of the biggest sources of litter on the planet. If everyone left their receipts in the machine, it would save a roll of paper more than 2 billion feet long—enough to circle the equator more than 15 times.” [via link]
+ Use cold water
“About 90 percent of the energy used for a load of laundry goes to heating the water. While you may want to wash bed linens in hot water to kill dust mites, opt for washing all other loads in cold — and save up to $300 and 330 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions each year.” [via link]
+ Switch your light bulbs
Replacing just one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year [via link] and now you can purchase a variety of different full spectrum and natural looking CFL bulbs. “If every family replaced one bulb with a CFL it would be like reducing carbon emissions from 800,000 cars.” [via link]
Stay tuned for lots more tips over the next few days…
It would be awesome if you could find some statistic on cigarette waste. That was a huge thing when I worked in water quality – cigarette butts people throw out the window or drop on the ground end up washing down the stormdrains into the ocean and all that stuff in cigarettes ends up contaminating the water. Yuck. Not to mention, it’s better for our health and the air quality to not smoke too! And then there’s the part about possibly starting fires, which some folks I suppose could argue are needed for natural cycles, but are clearly wasteful when you burn down houses and other buildings (leading to lots of nasty pariculates in the air as well as wasting perfectly good materials that require replacement). I could go on…
:)