With more and more people talking about green, what exactly does “Going Green” even mean? And how does one go about that? Green living is a way of life and the choices we make to help benefit our home… planet Earth. Here are some key terms and definitions to give a jumpstart and a basic foundation in your personal question to live: GREEN.
The average person is responsible for emitting 94 pounds of carbon dioxide every day. It takes four trees, which act as natural air filters, to offset the carbon dioxide each person generates in a month.
Idling your car 10 minutes less per day can keep 550 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air every year.
Recycling saves energy: Creating a new aluminum can from scratch takes 95% more energy than making a can from recycled aluminum.
Swapping 16 incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) saves emissions equivalent to taking a car off the road for a year. Americans use about 385 million gallons of gasoline every day, which means more than a gallon of gasoline every day for every man, woman and child.
A leaky faucet can waste up to 20 gallons of water per day, and a leaking toilet can waste up to 200 gallons a day. If you replace just one out of four of your light bulbs with fluorescents, you can save about 50% on your lighting bill. In the average home, 40% of all electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off. Across the US, this equals the annual output of 17 power plants.
Refrigerators use 14% of an average U.S. home's electricity. Replacing a 20-year-old refrigerator with a new, energy-efficient model reduces an average home's CO2 contribution by about 1 ton per year while saving about $65 annually on the electric bill
A typical home solar energy system pays for itself with the cost savings from lower energy bills in 11 to 15 years.
If every household in the United States replaced just one package of virgin fiber napkins with 100% recycled ones, we could save 1 million trees.
One third of tested bottled water brands were found to contain contaminants, such as arsenic and carcinogenic compounds, at levels exceeding state or industry standard.
Almost 40% of America's waste is paper and could be recycled, meaning fewer trees cut down. A standard-sized home solar energy system decreases monthly home energy bills by 40%-60%. Thirty-six states are anticipating water shortages by 2016. Yet the average American uses more than 100 gallons or water each day.
If every American replaced just one light bulb with an Energy Star compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), the energy saved could light more than 2.5 million homes for a year.Over its lifetime, a 40-mpg car will save $3,000 in fuel costs compared to a 20-mpg car. A family of four using low-flow showerheads instead of full-flow models can save about 20,000 gallons of water per year.
Daily building operation (lighting, electricity, heating, and cooling of homes, offices, and schools) accounts for more than one-third of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.
Microwaves are between 3.5 and 4.8 times more energy efficient than traditional electric ovens. If it costs ten cents to cook one item in a microwave, it would cost forty-eight cents to cook the same item in a standard oven. If everyone in North America cooked exclusively with a microwave for a year, we'd save as much energy as the entire continent of Africa consumes during that same time.
By 2025, the world must increase its water supply by 22 percent in order to meet its needs. Meanwhile, 40 percent of the drinking water supplied to homes is flushed down the toilet.
Keep your head out of the refrigerator and the door closed! The refrigerator is the single biggest energy-consuming kitchen appliance, and opening the refrigerator door accounts for between $30 and $60 of a typical family's electricity bill each year. The amount of energy saved in a year by more efficient refrigerator usage could be enough to light every house in the United States for more than four and a half months straight.
About one-sixth of the wood delivered to a construction site is never used. Instead, it's hauled to the landfill as wood waste scraps.
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