It all adds up...
*Fix up that junker rather than spend all of your cash on a brand new one. Over three million cars are abandoned in the U.S. every year. *Hitch a ride with your friends to save cash, gas, and wear-and-tear on your car. *It doesn't matter if you scope the refrigerator for 15 seconds or 30. Much of the cold air escapes when you open the door. *Be a fix-it head. The smallest drip from a leaky faucet can waste over 50 gallons a day. *Every year Americans generate about 1,200 lbs of solid waste per person. *The junk mail that Americans receive in one day could produce enough energy to heat a small city. *If you're going to drink, don't drive and don't litter. More than 15,600 plastic six-pack rings were found in three hours during a beach clean-up in Texas. *Americans waste enough styrofoam cups every year that you could circle the earth with them not once, but 436 times. *Enjoy hiking in the forest? Every week it takes an entire forest - over 50,000 trees - to supply Americans with their Sunday newspapers. *Americans produce 154 million tons of garbage every year - enough to fill the New Orleans Superdome from top to bottom. Twice a day. Every day. More than 50% of this trash is recyclable. *Like your battery operated football games? It takes 50 times more power to create the battery than the battery can actually generate. *Here's a great excuse on a Saturday morning: Mowing the lawn for half an hour can produce as much smog as driving a new car 127 miles. *Get a bike. More than half the working population of the U.S. lives within biking range (5 miles) of work. *Save those aluminum cans. Recycle them. Chances are good that within six weeks the aluminum in them will be back on the shelves of your grocery store. *In 1989 alone, Americans threw away enough aluminum cans to build 6,000 DC-10 airplanes. *Cruising around in your car on Friday nights is a thing of the past. If we keep using oil and gas at the rate we are now, the world's known oil reserves will last about 35 more years. *The average baby generates a ton of garbage a year. Plus, Americans throw away enough disposable diapers to fill a garbage barge every six hours. In addition, 60% of a disposable diaper is made from wood pulp. *If Tom Sawyer were around today, he could have used this excuse to get out of painting the fence: Americans use three million gallons of paint every day. That's over a billion gallons every year, which is enough to fill a lake 20 feet deep, four miles long, and a mile wide. But who would want to swim in it? *At the rate we are producing garbage, we will need 500 new dumps every year. That's space that could be used for hiking and camping, parks with running trails, recreation areas, and concert venues.
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