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Green Facts
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Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.
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Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.
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American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.
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Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.
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States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.
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In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.
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Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
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It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.
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A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.
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An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!
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Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.
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Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.
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Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.
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Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.
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A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
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Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
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A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.
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Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.
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A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.
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Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.
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For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.
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You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.
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Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months
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The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.
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Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.
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You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.
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Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.
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Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.
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82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.
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You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.
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One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.
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In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.
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Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.
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Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.
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If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.
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Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.
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Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.
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77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.
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Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.


In an obscure but oft-quoted excerpt from the “Marine Foresight Panel Report,” the British Office of Science and Technology asserts that “if less than 0.1% of the renewable energy in the oceans could be converted to electricity, it would satisfy the present world demand for energy...

Quick! How much energy did you use for heating last year? When was the last time you replaced the weather stripping on your windows? What is the vampire load of your television? What kind of power plants or renewable sources does your utility company use to generate power for...
Energy. We hear the word all day long. Save energy, I need some energy, Energizer bunny, etc. But, when it comes down to it, we’re often left grasping for straws when we try to explain what energy is. And given our current climate situation (it’s drastically changing , by the way)...
Are we addicted to oil? I think so. In 2009 the United States consumed 18.8 million barrels of oil a day. Another piece of evidence is our Nation’s pursuit of extracting oil from tar sands in Canada, a proposal to expand an existing pipeline to increase production by about 700,000 barrels a day—this is known as the Keystone XL Pipeline...
Solar power is gaining momentum every day, but is it growing as fast as it should be? Government backed programs in the United States have created considerable markets in New Jersey, California, and just about any state with a good amount of sun. The 30% federal tax incentive, generous loan guarantees, tax credits, and renewable portfolio standards...
What are Biofuels? Biofuels are an energy source derived from any organic plant, animal, or living material. The most prominent use of the word has been the increasing use of biofuels as a renewable energy source in the green industry—the two most well known renewable biofuels being ethanol and biodiesel. However, there are a good number more...
Energy is one of the most important issues around the world, and has been particularly important in developing countries.1 The World Bank categorizes developing countries as those “with low or middle levels of GNP [Gross National Product] per capita.”2 Developing nations are usually marked by their industrialization and economic growth, with...
While the smart grid is one of the hottest buzz words in the energy and green industry, few know exactly what it is, and for good reason. As recently as August 1, 2011 the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a comprehensive catalog of smart grid standards. The smart grid is still being defined and its capacity as a technology...
Energy efficiency is performing the same action or process as before, but using less energy to do so. Most well known is the growing trend of exchanging incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), which are 75% more efficient than incandescents. Different from energy conservation, energy efficiency focuses on changing...
Renewable Energy and the U.S. Military... We rightfully associate war with environmental destruction—the spraying of Agent Orange in the jungles of Vietnam, the burning of oil wells in Iraq , the development of the gas-guzzling Humvee —and we rarely applaud the military for its contributions to environmental technologies. When destruction drives...
What is ethanol? Ethanol is an alcohol-based fuel that has become popular around the world and is most commonly used to fuel your motor vehicles. However, it is the corn-based ethanol that has garnered interest across the world for over a decade. While corn ethanol is the predominant feed stock of choice, ethanol can be made from a variety of feed...
The age of renewable technology and energy is upon us, or is it? As discussed in the previous Greeniacs article on Energy Issues, solar power and wind power are two popular but unfortunately underused players of the renewable energy industry. In 2009, wind power accounted for only 1% of electricity production in the United States, while solar energy...
For starters, what are biofuels? Biofuels are known as any fuel made from organic matter, with the most well known fuels coming from corn, soybeans, palm, algae and many other plants. So now what are algae? This is a trickier question than you think, but most of us know algae as the green colored “scum” found on ponds and unfortunately sometimes...
Hydropower, which is energy harnessed from the power of falling water, has been used around the world for thousands of years. The first hydroelectric power plant in the United States went online in 1882, and within a few decades hydroelectric power made up approximately 40% of U.S. electricity. Hydropower now constitutes only 10% of U.S...
Can you imagine selecting one of your children to be successful at the expense of your other child or children? Unfortunately, in the world of energy resources and management, policy makers are faced with this very dilemma. A major dilemma presented today lies between clean energy and ecosystem preservation. If creating a carbon-neutral society...
Carbon Neutral is a term that gets thrown around quite a bit these days, so what is it exactly? Is it a goal, a guideline, or a gimmick? Carbon neutrality is at the forefront of any conversation concerning alternative energies or climate change. Of course, in order to attain carbon neutrality, we have to start off by cutting carbon emissions...
Faced with rising oil prices and waning oil reserves around the world, this is the era in which the world’s energy portfolio will forever change. I view “peak oil” as occurring the moment that alternative energies become...
Energy is everywhere—it is stored in all matter, but needs to be converted into energy that humans can use. Likewise, all of the waste we produce is a source of energy. The law of conservation states that energy cannot be created AND that it cannot be destroyed—meaning our daily waste contains useful energy The task we are left with is simply...
Here is a hypothetical situation: I buy a new hybrid car, say the Toyota Prius. Not only am I happy to own a Prius because they are trendy, but they also use substantially less gasoline per mile than a comparable vehicle, which equates to being more energy efficient. Sounds pretty good, especially with all of this global warming talk and my attempts to...
Whether we have reached “peak oil” yet is up for debate. Peak oil is “the maximum rate of the production of oil in any area under consideration, recognizing that it is a finite natural resource, subject to depletion." The peak oil crisis refers to the time when the petroleum supply is so low that extraction is no longer economically justifiable...
In recent years, it seems that the lightest of the metals—Lithium (Li)—is getting more attention than the precious metals. Lithium has become increasingly popular due to its ability to store lots of energy in a small lightweight package: the lithium-ion battery. In the 1990’s, lithium started being used commercially...
“Alternative fuel source” talk is everywhere these days! So what’s the latest in alternative fuel sources you ask? Microbial fuel cells! A microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a specific type of biological fuel cell that converts chemical energy to electrical energy using microorganisms as the catalysts. Many different kinds of waste can be converted into...
Biobutanol is arguably the better biogas when compared to ethanol for usage in motor vehicles. Because of its naturally heavier structure and similarity to traditional petroleum based gasoline, biobutanol is more versatile. Unlike ethanol, which needs special piping or mixing with water in order to transport it, biobutanol can be transported...
Why wouldn’t you get excited about something called “smart metering”? In case you haven’t heard, smart meters are being marketed as the gas and utilities digital metering system of the future. You remember your old meter—it had those spinning mechanical dials that someone from your utilities company had to manually inspect to determine your...
Biodiesel, the conversion… As we watch in horror at the pollution, capitalist frenzy, and war surrounding the oil industry, people around the globe are naturally turning toward alternative fuels. One of the most readily available, simplest to accomplish means of limiting your oil consumption without giving up your car is to convert a diesel...
These days, it’s almost a dirty word—petroleum. The ‘p’ word, also called CRUDE OIL, is something we use everyday but don’t like to talk about. Instead, we prefer discussing wind and solar energy—the alternatives to that uncomfortable, dirty necessity: PETROLEUM. Petroleum is embedded in our daily lives, and does much more than just run our cars. Petroleum derived substances are found in products ranging from aspirin to polyester, and without them, our lives would look very different....
Renewable energy sources are constantly being analyzed and debated in the news, but do you really know how the actual process works? Where does that energy actually come from? Impress your friends with some scientific knowhow and learn about the science behind six major renewable energy technologies...
Solar power, the generation of electricity from sunlight, is the world’s largest energy resource and also the largest available energy source in the United States. With a new administration in the White House, there has been a renewed focus on the environment and alternative energy solutions. President Obama recently passed the...
China is the most populated country in the world, and they are currently the second biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, behind the United States. If China's carbon emissions keep up with a pace of 7% per year growth, by 2030 its carbon dioxide (CO2) production will equal that of the entire world today...
President Barack Obama recently announced that his administration has “approved an 8.3 billion dollar loan guarantee” for new nuclear power plant construction. This loan will go to Southern Company, which will build two advanced reactors at a plant in Georgia—the first ones built in the United States since 1976. Those supporting the...
While some sectors of society have embraced alternative forms of energy such as wind and solar, others are exploring ways of reaching previously unreachable oil. Known as oil sand or tar sand, these are deposits of sand or clay, water and bitumen,which is a heavy and viscous oil. Unlike traditional sources of oil, oil sand requires...
Here’s a thought: converting your engine to run on biodiesel or vegetable oil is not a progressive idea; it is regressive. It dates all the way back to 1900, the year when Rudolph Diesel, the French-born son of German immigrants, successfully used peanut oil to run an engine at the World Exhibition in Paris. Sadly, we haven't made...
In 1919, the founding father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, had a vision to create a hydroelectric dam at Three Gorges on the Yangtze River. Almost a century later, his idea has finally come to fruition. After 2 decades of construction, the Three Gorges Dam will soon be running as a hydroelectric river dam that spans the Yangtze River in...
Wind energy is becoming a popular alternative to fossil fuels because it is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and produces no greenhouse gas emissions. The use of wind as a power source has been around for thousands of years. Historically, it has been used across the world to pump excess water off of flooded land, to saw-mill timber...
Homeowners around the world who want to do something good for the environment while also reducing their electricity bill are increasingly turning to solar energy for their home. Although it's great that there are so many ways to introduce solar energy into the home, it can be hard to decide what to do amongst all of the options. Some solar...
Mountaintop removal mining has recently become one of the most controversial methods of mining for coal. Recently, there has been a growing protest against the practice. Although mountaintop removal has large environmental and social costs, it is more cost-effective for the coal company. The reason is because of the physical process of...
With the broadcast of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", the issue of global warming had escalated to unprecedented heights. These days, nearly all consumers are at least aware of global warming, and with the media's push to "go-green", many are now turning that awareness into constructive lifestyle changes.One of the more prominent...
Grilling on the BBQ, lounging around the pool, soaking in the view on your patio - these are all the signature trademarks of summer, but so is the blazing unrelenting heat that comes with it. As much as we love summer, we can't help but feeling tortured by its heat. And great as summer is, it's not-so-great features include a sweltering...
Wake up and smell the burning coal, Peters, I thought, after eyeing my whopping electric bill. So far my family’s efforts to cut our energy usage resemble chopping down a mighty redwood with a herring. Not that we haven’t been trying. I programmed my thermostat, keeping daytime temperatures at a balmy 68 degrees. My thin-skinned youngest...
Environmentalists receive a bad rap for being extremely picky about every energy-consuming detail of human life. They ask people to change their eating and transportation habits just to prevent a few tons of carbon dioxide from being released. Granted, this is crucial in the whole “everyone doing their part” affair, but what if I told you one...
Corporations everywhere are looking for a way out of significantly reducing their carbon emissions. Populations are demanding emission cut backs and during every political election new initiatives emerge that aim to cut big business' use of dirty fuels. Some companies have argued that environmental standards are too harsh, that the bar is set...
Beating the energy crisis is no easy feat, especially with an ailing economy tempting energy companies to continue employing cheap, dirty energy. Those in charge offer the public solutions that involve boosting technological advancements, rather than urging people to reduce their bad habits and consumption rates. For Peak Oil Communities...
The hunt for new energy sources began with the obvious: products of mother earth that are known to be energy-rich. When the consequences of petroleum use became too hot to handle, and sources of gasoline were rumored to be dwindling in supply, people sought a source that was renewable. The genius behind renewable energy sources is...
It is no secret that the world's intractable addiction to coal as an energy source has been a major cause of global climate change. Mountain top mining has stripped landscapes of their geological history and underground excavations for coal have led to numerous deaths. And although coal accounts for 22% of the United States’ energy use...
California is known for being a state to set nation-wide environmental trends, and this November's election is no different. A significant amount of election buzz has been circling around Proposition 1A, a measure formulated by nearly two-thirds of California's legislative branch that calls for the implementation of a high speed rail stretching...
If you decide you want your own solar cooker, consider the advantages and disadvantages of each type. Box cookers are literally shaped like a box. While these can cook large quantities of food evenly without the need to monitor them, they take a long time to cook. Panel cookers are made up of flat panels which focus the rays into the food. The advantage of panel...
It has been estimated that almost 86% of energy used annually in the U.S. is from the combustion of fossil fuels. The pollution from these fossil fuels is responsible for 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Sources of fossil fuels-non-renewable resources that take millions of years to form-are being depleted everyday. A report put...
Save energy and money this summer: trade your gas or electric dryer for a clothesline. It’s not revolutionary: people have relied on free solar power to dry their clothes a lot longer than they’ve relied on machines. This summer I’m hanging out our laundry for the first time ever. (I’m a city girl, okay?) I’m a new dog learning...
With energy costs rising and fuel reserves dwindling, more and more people are turning to solar power. Solar panels capture energy from the sun,which can then be converted to electricity or used to heat water, depending onthe system you have in place. While solar electric and solar thermal systemsrequire significant initial investment, they are...
With rising global populations, an ever increasing demand for energy, and compelling evidence for climate change, it is crucial that we invest in energy technologies that are not dependant on dangerous and polluting fossil fuels. While policy makers, scientists, and businessmen will have to take a lead role in developing and propagating...