United States Recycling Statistics

March 14, 2010 By Sherri Stockman Leave a Comment

Recycling helps to prevent Global Warming

There is good news and bad news concerning United States recycling statistics.

First, the good news:

The recovery rate of municipal solid waste (a fancy way of saying city garbage) through recycling and composting programs was up to 32% as of 2005 (the US General Accounting Office only reports every two years).

That is a significant increase from 1980, when less than 10% was recycled.
Now, the bad news:

Since 1980, the generation of municipal solid waste has grown by 60% – nearly 246 million tons per year in 2005!

Organic materials make up the bulk of wastes that go into land fills. Around 35% are paper and cardboard, while yard trimmings and food scraps total about 25%.

Some Encouraging Recycling Facts

With paper products, we’re doing pretty well; almost half of the paper used in the USA is now being recycled into new paper products. That’s more than glass, metal, plastic, and “miscellaneous” combined.

The largest category of recycled paper goods was newspaper at 89%, followed closely by corrugated cardboard, at 72%.

Some paper can’t be reprocessed because of being soiled by food, etc.

Many municipalities will pick up tree trimmings and Christmas trees and turn them into mulch for parks and landscaped street medians. This has an added benefit of saving irrigation water.

Residential grass clippings and food waste can be easily composted and shouldn’t ordinarily be sent to the landfill.

Particularly good news is that lead acid batteries – a landfill disaster – are the recycling winners, with a whopping rate of 99% recovery!

Landfill or Recycle?

Other high recovery rates include major appliances – 67%, steel cans – 63%, and aluminum cans – 45%, although the rate of aluminum recycling has dropped from a high of 68% in 1992.

Some credit for increases in the United States recycling statistics must go to the Keep America Beautiful organization’s Great American Clean-Up program. This annual event boasts 2 million volunteers and diverts thousands of tons of litter and garbage to recycling projects rather than landfills (or landscapes.

Aluminum should be recycled whenever possible; recycling saves 95% of the energy needed to produce new aluminum from raw materials.

For more United States recycling statistics, please visit the National Recycling Coalition website.

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Rainforest Conservation Info

March 14, 2010 By Sherri Stockman Leave a Comment

Endangered Ecosystems

As you realize that global warming IS REAL, opportunities and need both increase for rainforest conservation. Info has been out there for decades, but maybe the public eye has become so accustomed to the burning and clear-cutting pictures, it no longer really notices them.

Logging – much of it done illegally – is the most visible form of rainforest destruction.

Clear-cutting is usually the most profitable means of harvesting valuable timber, because the rainforest tends to be an “equal opportunity grower” with trees of high monetary value interspersed with what are seen as “junk” trees.

At least with logging, not everything is wasted, as happens when the forest is burned to clear it for pasture or other agriculture. Burning rainforests can be clearly seen from outer space, as this astronaut’s photo of Mexico shows – what looks like white dots are actually fires.

But even with careful deforestation – selective logging – the roads that are built for logging access wind up being used for human activities that are further damaging to delicate ecosystems.

Why You Should Share Rainforest Conservation Info

Rainforests are crucial to the ecosystem of our planet. They have been described as the Earth’s “lungs” or respiratory system. The massive numbers of trees and other plants absorb carbon dioxide (CO2), and then “breathe out” oxygen, which we need to survive.

We (humans and animals) breathe in the air around us, take in the oxygen, then throw off carbon dioxide as we exhale. This is a great arrangement, because everything balances out, if all is working as it should.

Unfortunately, the use of fossil fuels (carbon that has been stored underground for millennia, and is now being released) is dramatically increasing the world-wide levels of CO2. So just at the time we need all those trees in the rainforest the very most, we are destroying them through ignorance and greed.

Rainforest conservation info can mean the difference between a clear-cutting junk heap and a jungle paradise.

Rainforests are also home to loads of wildlife and plant species, many of which have never even been documented. Many scientists believe the potential is huge for finding medical cures in these tropical regions.

As we destroy the forests, we also wipe out the indigenous cultures and people who have lived there for generations.

Find extensive rainforest conservation info at Mongabay.com

What Can You Do to Help Preserve the Rainforests?

It’s true that this a huge and terrible mess, but, short of going into the Amazon jungle and chaining yourself to a tree (not a really useful activity), there are many little things you can do to help save the rainforests.

Anything you accomplish that will prevent Global Warming will also help with rainforest conservation (info here).

You can buy a tree, or purchase the timber rights on an acre of rainforest.

And of course there are many great non-profit organizations who urgently need your contributions. You can even trigger a donation to save the rainforest by simply clicking the mouse on your computer.

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Prevent Global Warming and Help Save the World!

March 14, 2010 By Sherri Stockman Leave a Comment

GreenHQ’s Top Ten Ways to Prevent Global Warming

1) Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents. There are many styles available now to blend with your decor.

2) Turn your thermostat up in the summer, and down in the winter. You don’t have to get really radical, but you’ll probably be healthier, and you’ll save on your fuel bill.

3) Eat local and organic. Trucking your food back and forth across the country (or the world) makes absolutely no sense. Fresh produce tastes better, it’s more nutritious, it’s usually less expensive, and it supports your local economy.

4) Drive a fuel-efficient vehicle. The technology for electric and hybrid cars is already here, but if this isn’t an option for you, at least get make sure your car gets over 25 mpg.

5) Use public transportation, ride a bicycle, or walk instead of taking your car, when possible.

6) Use a clothesline to dry your clothes – weather permitting. You get exercise and that wonderful fresh smell!

7) Recycle, and buy goods that are made with recycled materials. Avoid disposables.

8 ) Replace older appliances with newer, more efficient ones.

9) Unplug (or use a power strip you can turn on and off) your electronics when you’re not using them. Phantom loads are a big waste.

10) Use renewable energy. Your electric company can switch you to Green Energy for a few extra cents per kilowatt.

BONUS ENTRY:
Plant something. In your yard, or even in your apartment, plants absorb and filter out harmful greenhouse gases.

For more ways to prevent global warming, visit the Union of Concerned Scientists website.

Still unsure how to start preventing Global Warming?
Check out this Global Warming Action Kit. It’s cool.

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Preventing Global Warming

February 5, 2010 By Sherri Stockman 2 Comments

The Global Warming Action Kit

An ounce of preventing global warming is worth 22,000 pounds of CO2 emissions

Help prevent Global Warming with a Global Warming Action Kit

You want to start helping to cool down our Earth’s climate crisis, but maybe a Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle is not in this year’s budget?

Don’t be discouraged. For less than $100 you can save 11 tons of carbon dioxide – the most common greenhouse gas – from being emitted into our atmosphere.

That’s a great beginning!

This global warming prevention kit from GAIAM includes:

3 compact fluorescent light bulbs (uses only about 25% of the energy that standard incandescent bulbs consume).
Stainless steel water bottle. Quit buying water in those plastic bottles that require 47,000,000 gallons of oil to produce each year. Re-filling your water bottle from a good water filter is a much greener option.

Solar-powered flashlight. Sounds like an oxymoron, but you can charge this flashlight for 4 hours in the sun for eight hours of use. And you can charge it 500 times.

Battery charger and a 4 pack of rechargeable batteries. Can save you up to $1,500 in disposable battery costs (along with keeping toxic batteries out of the landfills).

Low-Flow shower head saves water and water heating usage (and costs).

Solar-powered fan to clip on to your firm-brimmed hat. Says “Im Cool” grin with sunglasses while you’re preventing global warming.

As an added bonus, you’ll receive the Real Goods Solar Living Sourcebook, a 550 page volume of how-to and what-for on solar power for your home, living off the grid, alternative transportation, and more global warming prevention ideas.

GAIAM is a well-established company and was doing “green” long before it was trendy.

They have a “No-Risk Guarantee” which states “We want you to be completely satisfied with every purchase you make with us. If you are in any way dissatisfied with a product you ordered or received, we’ll exchange it, credit your account or refund your money (less shipping and handling).”

Get Your Global Warming Action Kit Today!
Also makes a great gift.

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Recycling Paper Facts

February 5, 2010 By Sherri Stockman Leave a Comment

Gathering facts on recycling paper can be fun.

Recycled paper makes sense

Here is some paper recycling trivia:

For every ton of paper that is recycled, about 3 cubic yards of landfill space is saved.

In 2005, nearly fifty percent of the paper used in the United States was recycled into new paper products instead of being sent to the landfill. Today, recovered paper supplies over 40 percent of the total fiber needed to produce U.S. paper products.

Almost all the paper manufactured in Europe and the U.S. through the mid-1800s was recycled paper. Old rags and worn-out clothing were the main source of fiber supplying the paper mills (the process for making paper from wood pulp had not yet been developed).

Even though some papers claim 100% recycled fiber, paper makers will often combine various amounts of post-consumer recycled fiber with new, pre-consumer fiber to produce paper of higher quality.

Pre-consumer recovered paper is a mixture of trimmings and scraps from printing, carton manufacturing, and other converting processes that are gathered and reprocessed in the mill into a product.

Post-consumer recovered paper is what consumers bring to the recycling center – corrugated boxes, newspapers, magazines, and office paper that has already has been used. It is then returned to the paper mill for reprocessing.

Wood fibers can be recycled up to seven times before they become too short and worn out to be made into paper again. New wood fiber is needed to replace the unusable recycled fiber that washes out of the pulp during the recycling paper process.

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