Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day! I'm not a tree-hugger or anything, but I have gotten to be quite the recycle queen as of the past couple of years. It was amazing how much less trash we sent out when we started recycling. Then once I started it became sort of an obsession. I now recycle just about anything I can. All of the kids papers from school , toilet paper rolls, even the paper tags that come on new clothing, not to mention the plastic string things that hold the tags to the clothes. (I know, it's a bit over the top...) But when you think about all of the milk cartons and glass bottles and soda cans that most of us throw out, it can really add up. Anyway- I thought I would dedicate this post to Earth Day and post some interesting recycling facts. Hope this inspires at least one person to start recycling! Here are the facts:
- A recent gov. survey showed that at least 36 states are anticipating statewide water shortages by the year 2013.
-If all US households installed water-efficient appliances, the country would save more than 3 trillion gallons of water and more than $18 billion dollars per year.
-Letting your faucet run (like while brushing your teeth) for 5 minutes uses about as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb run for 14 hours.
-If every household replaced it's most often used incandescent light bulbs with CFL's, electricity use for lighting could be cut in half.
-Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 mature trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, and 4,100 kilowatt-hours of electricity- enough energy to power the average American home for 5 months.
-Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100-watt light bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a large TV for 2 hours.
-Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.
-The 36 billion aluminum cans landfilled last year had a scrap value of more than $600 million dollars. (Makes you want to go dumpster divin'...)
-If every American recycled just one out of every 10 plastic bottles they used, we'd keep 200 million pounds of plastic out of the landfills each year.
-Remember that styrofoam is not recycleable. Do not buy it.....
Hope you find these facts as interesting as I did. Remember this the next time you throw away something that can be re-used! ;0)