Sunday, December 02, 2007

LIVING GREEN--Use Less Stuff

Another of the things that I can do for my children and my children's children!
My husband and I live in an area which is predominately older; therefore many things are simpler and less in quantity.....until we get to the holidays.

With out of town guests over Thanksgiving week; I found myself carrying out almost twice as much trash and recycling pieces than we usually have. As I looked around on our block; I realized that we were not alone in our increased consumption. Everyone had more "trash" than normal.

In an effort to do what I can for the Earth and the environment; I am always looking for the ways that we can make even little strides in conservation that will add up to large savings if done by many.

I found a site called ULS (Use less stuff)
UseLessStuff
Check out this site for a checklist of simple things you can do to reduce waste while you eat, drink, and make merry this holiday season.

The following "Did You Knows" will make you think.

**Did you know...at least 28 billion pounds of edible food are wasted each year - or over 100 pounds per person. Putting one less cookie on Santa's plate will reduce his snacking by about 2 million pounds.
**Did you know...if each family reduced holiday gasoline consumption by one gallon (about twenty miles), we'd reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one million tons?
**Did you know...in 1981 the average household received 59 mail order catalogues, and by 1991 the number had increased 140%, to 142?
**Did you know...if each household canceled 10 mail-order catalogues it would reduce trash by 3.5 pounds per year? (If everybody did this, the stack of canceled catalogues would be 2,000 miles high!)
**Did you know...the 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year n the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high? If we each sent one card less, we'd save 50,000 cubic yards of paper
**Did you know...if every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet?


No comments: