10 Going Green Facts That Will Make Your Head Spin
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Green Fact #1:
In 2008, the United States consumed 99 Quadrillion Btus (British thermal units) of energy, mostly in the form of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil. One Btu is equivalent to the energy released by burning one match. So, the United State’s annual energy consumption adds up to a mind boggling 99,000,000,000,000,000 matches. That’s 271 trillion each day, or roughly 1 million matches per person per day.
Green Fact #2:
A governmental study calculated that the gasoline equivalent of the lifetime energy savings offered by using a single 24 watt compact fluourescent lamp (CFL) in lieu of a 100 watt incandescent bulb would be sufficient to drive a Toyota Prius from San Francisco to New York. Replacing that 100 Watt bulb with a CFL will prevent the release of 800 pounds of carbon dioxide over the CFL’s operating life.
Green Fact #3:
According to the American Solar Energy Society, the amount of sunlight that falls on the Earth’s surface in one minute is sufficient to meet world energy demand for an entire year.
Green Fact #4:
Manufacturing cell phones, computers, and other consumer electronics require a lot of energy. In fact, 81% of the life-cycle energy costs associated with a single computer is from its manufacture, only 19% from its operation. In other words, the computer you’re using right now, in all the years you’ll own it, will never consume more energy than was required to create it. The production of a single computer also uses 42,000 gallons of water. Please recycle your used electronics and turn them off when not in use.
Green Fact #5:
If the entire population of the United States washed their clothes exclusively with cold water (instead of hot), we would save $3 billion in energy costs annually and cut national CO2 emissions by over a full percent!
Green Fact #6:
Did you know that recycling one ton of paper saves 20 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, three cubic yards of landfill space, 60 pounds of air pollutants, and saves enough energy to power the average home for six months?
Green Fact #7:
The energy saved by recycling a single aluminum can would run a TV for three hours. Every three months, Americans toss out enough aluminum to completely rebuild the nation’s commercial airline fleet.
Green Fact #8:
It takes, on average, 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to grow, process, and deliver 1 calorie of food energy to our tables.
Green Fact #9:
Burning one gallon of gasoline creates about 19 pounds of carbon dioxide. The average mature tree can absorb 48 pounds of CO2 per year.
Green Fact #10:
An estimated 15% to 30% of a home’s total heating and cooling energy is lost through poorly sealed duct-work, costing consumers about $5 billion dollars annually.
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Category: Green Business, Green Cars, Green Facts, Making a Difference
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great.
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Nice article. Here’s another surprising fact – driving your car three miles uses the same energy as running a 15 watt CFL bulb for 180 hours or running a laptop computer for 90 hours. In 2009, 50% of household trips in the US were less than 3 miles in length. An electric bike can easily replace these trips and uses just 3% of the energy of a car (because you don’t have to move around the car!). Changing our transportation habits is one of the most effective things we can do to save tons of energy and go green right now, but is often missed when we talk about green strategies.
Learn more at my website about one great alternative that easily replaces car trips even if you have children or stuff to carry or a longer distance to go. It changed my life. I challenge you to change yours too. http://www.cycle9.com/category/go-by-bike/
Paper comes from tree farms. If you don’t use as much paper, there won’t be as many tree farms. If you recycle paper, you do not save trees. The water used in paper production is 100% recoverable as the impurities introduced to the water are useful for some plants and is otherwise biodegradable.
While these ‘facts’ are all true, they are all also slanted. Do we need to clean up our act overall? Yes, but we will ALWAYS create trans-formative effects across the planet. Not all of these effects are negative. They are just not what would have happened if we weren’t here.
I don’t see anyone out there with “save the smallpox” signs. We can make progress, but shutting down that progress in the name of being green is irrational and counterproductive. Tree farms can be a good thing. Reforestation after lumber gathering doesn’t have to be bad for the whole Earth. It may be bad for some specific animals or plants, but that isn’t the same as bad for us. The Earth can adapt, it always has.
Doesn’t surprise me that people are surprised by this. Pay attention world. Cape Cod windmills would be turning now, if not for humanistic idiocy. Disrupting to a picturesque “view”?, to stop the construction of? … Does anyone understand the prevailing lunacy?
Extreme polluting, ravaging of the environment, stupidity or ignorance that allow such things to exist, is the dominating atmosphere of the day.
(Oh, wait a moment, that would be greed, and complacency)
“All” know that “Green” resources would end the chaos in our environment. Too much other “green” to be made first. Too many have known for decades these things that would have prevented so much havoc on the worlds’ resources and environment, which cause the premature deaths of humans, looming extinctions, extinction of wildlife.
Just breathe the air. Oil spewing into the sea … All very preventable.
Makes me sick, like most news broadcasts, and political doublespeak.
Wake up.
this is great…..very enlightening!!
I’m down for saving enough by recycling the can to run the TV – now I’ll feel better about all that Playstation 3 I play!!
When considering CFL’s, you need to consider the full life cycle. From producers like China, with little to no regard for environmental considerations of production. They are then shipped halfway around the world. When broken or burnt out, they’re unlikely to be recycled, spreading mercury.
These are all good facts to consider whilst living our everyday lives. Humanity has been terribly lax when it comes to the environment and it has only really been since the 70′s that joe public started to pay attention to the environment.
We should keep the environment in mind all the time – it’s not ours we are just borrowing it from our children.
To invest in the environment please take a look here:
http://atlanticparks.com
A good article that I found today. Thanks for your post.
Some surprising numbers here – interesting page!
I really like this post and will be bookmarking and sharing this with my social friends on Digg
Not new before Obama was Al Gore and they will never ever give up although World-wide Warming continues to be proved false
Some surprising numbers here – interesting page!
hey… this post is sweet for my brain lol
pretty good, but does not do justice to the title
nice i like it
Re-use is key to cutting back waste. For every item you reuse, another single use “disposable” item ceases to exist.
It can start with someting small and ordinary, like a drinking straw. Soon the idea will expand and choosing reusables becomes the desired individual choice that makes a huge difference collectively.
http://glassdharma.com/about
http://glassdharma.blogspot.com
Go green propaganda, all its really trying to do is turn us into a one world government and take jobs out of the hands of hard working people.. In the long run everyone talks about how its saves money, and seems to cost people a whole lot more…. and the air flow in buildings and houses that go green make stale air, and that can cause more problems for someone then working in a coal mine.. If you are about going green thats good for you but don’t try to shut down other people and make them lose jobs, then you just seem like a communist.. Oh and you should read up on Agenda 21 before you really think about going green.. I’m just saying..
Alot of great information here if everyone did a little, alot can be occomplished…
Wow. some of these are really stunning facts!
Interesting data on what recycling saves, and other green alternatives like switching to compact flourescent bulbs.
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