That’s Friday, April 22nd, 2011. In honor of it, I went looking for a list of things that anyone here in Boulder City could do on their own to make some small difference on Friday and heck…even be inspired to continue it past Earth Day.
I found a pretty cool website called A Billion Acts of Green – where you can pledge to do your part, no matter how small, to participate in Earth Day….you can check it out for yourself at www.abillionactsofgreen.com. And even if you don’t officially pledge — I still liked reading through the list of “the little things” anyone can do to pitch in.
I also went looking for some stats and found quite a list from the Clean Air Council — you can see the whole list (as well as their references for where they got these statistics) by clicking here – but I’m passing along some of the stats in the list of “the little things you can do” below:
- Remember to bring in my own reusable shopping bags to the store – because the estimates are that every year, Americans use approximately 1 billion shopping bags. In fact, during 2009’s International Coastal Cleanup, the Ocean Conservancy found that plastic bags were the second-most common kind of waste found, at 1 out of every 10 items picked up and tallied.
- Lower your use of bottled water/beverages – because between 1997 and 2007, bottled water consumption in the U.S. more than doubled and 26-41% of the 2.4 tons of PET plastic discarded each year is bottled water bottles. Oh, and less than 10% of the price of a bottle of water is for the water itself…crazy since at least 44% of “purified” bottled water sold in the U.S. started out as municipal water.
- Stop using disposable cups, plates and utensils at home and work – because the average American office worker uses about 500 disposable cups each year. Every year, Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times.
- Print it out on paper less often – the average American uses about the equivalent of one 100-foot-tall Douglas fir tree in paper and wood products each year. The average office worker in the US uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year.
