Ignite

Water75% of all water used in American homes is used in the bathroom

36 states are expecting water shortages by 2013

1 drop per second from a leaky faucet equal 3,000 gallons/year

What to do?

Take a shower, 70 gallons for a bath versus 15-25 for a five minute shower

Turn the water off while brushing your teeth

Make sure to wash a full load, every time in cold water when possible.

Don’t overwater, use native plants, install irrigation systems.

It is estimated that 30-50% of water used on lawns and gardens is lost to evaporation and run off.

Ditch the water bottles, use a filter at home, and refill glasses or stainless steel water bottles. (use a steel bottle that is made from recycled steel!!!)

25MILLION plastic bottles per year

Save

Paper500,000 trees must be cut down to produce the Sunday edition of newspapers

7 trees are used to produce the paper used by 1 person per year

1 BLLION trees worth of paper are is thrown away every year world wide

What to do

Get off of mailing lists, bank and pay bills electronically.

Take a reusable bag(s) to shop

Buy products made from recycled paper

In the manufacturing process of recycled paper

74% less air pollution is generated 35% less water pollution is generated 58% less water is required 64% less energy is required

Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!

Aluminum and steel

More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product

We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year

1500 food items come in steel cans

What can we do?

There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can be recycled.

Recycling 1 ton of aluminum cans conserves the equivalent of 1,665 gallons of gasoline

Recycling steel and tin cans saves 74% of the energy used to produce them.

An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can

500 years from now!

Every ton of steel recycled saves 2,500 lbs. of iron ore, 1,400 lbs. of coal and 120 lbs. of limestone.

An average of 113,204 aluminum cans are recycled every minute of every day.

Recycling one ton of aluminum saves 37 barrels of oil.

Glass

It takes approximately 1 million years for a glass bottle to break down in a landfill.

Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper

What can we do

Glass never wears out - it can be recycled forever.

Recycling glass saves 25-32% of the energy used to make glass.

Glass containers save 9 gallons of fuel for every ton of glass recycled.

Most bottles and jars contain at least 25% recycled glass.

Glass never wears out -- it can be recycled forever

States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume

Facts

Each person creates about 4.7 pounds of waste every single day

Disposal of waste to landfills has decreased from 89% in 1980 to 54% in 2007

On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill,

and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.

What we can do

Recycling all of your home's waste newsprint, cardboard, glass and metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 850 lbs. a year.

If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!

What we have done

The amount of recycling in 2007 saved the energy equivalent of 10.7 billion gallons of gasoline

In 2007 99% of lead acid batteries were recycled, 54% of paper and paperboard were recycled