Going Green Part 2
The holidays provide a great opportunity to Go Green. With Christmas quickly approaching it is a great time to look around your house and garage for those items you no longer use and donate them to charity. It’s all about recycling and reusing. Those dreaded white elephant gift exchanges at work….rewrap those gifts you’ve received in the past but don’t use and send them on their merry way.
A great site to help you ”Green your Holidays” is www.earth911.org. They provide information on treecycling, budgeting for the holidays, and much much more. There’s no time like the present (ha ha, get it, present because it’s Christmas) so get busy with the R&R. No sillies, not rest and relaxation……Recycle and Reuse!!
Here are some statistics to keep you motivated in continuing the recycling loop:
- Recycling all of your home’s waste newsprint, cardboard, glass, and metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 850 pounds a year.
- Recycled aluminum saves 95% more energy than virgin aluminum; recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours (Reynolds Metal Company).
- Recycled glass generates 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution (NASA)
- Recycling one ton of recycled paper uses 64% less energy, 50% less water, and 74% less air pollution. Plus, it saves 17 trees and creates 5 times more jobs than manufacturing one ton of paper from virgin wood pulp.
Recycle: There are ways to recycle almost anything these days, from computers to glass to cell phones to tires to Christmas trees. The trick is finding out where to take them. That’s where the Earth911 website comes in. Just enter your zip code in the form below and you’ll be taken to a site that will give you information on all the recycling centers in your area. They’ll also tell you what’s ok to leave on your curb and what you’ll have to take to a center. So pop in your zip code and start clearing out that garage/attic/basement/closet…
Reuse: Newspapers can be the best glass cleaner, and can be reused for cleaning and then recycled. Everyday Americans buy 62 million newspapers and throw out 44 million. That’s the equivalent of dumping 500,000 trees into a landfill every week.
