GO GREEN!!!

GO GREEN!!! BY: AUGUSTO DIEDRICH GO GREEN PROJECT The gulf of mexico oil spill The Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010 is the largest and longest oil spill in U.S. history. On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and causing crude oil to leak from the well one mile below the waters surface. More than 120 million gallons of oil were spilled, affecting lives, livelihoods, birds, sealife, and estuaries along the coasts of Mississippi, Lousiana, Alabama, and Florida. Mining and burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal impacts the environment and can cause damage such as the Gulf oil spill. Fossil fuels are also nonrenewable, meaning they can't be easily replenished. However, cleaner, renewable sources of energy, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuels, ar more expensive, less accesible and less widely used. How big is your footprint? Your ecological footprint is a measure of how much land, water, and resources it takes to support your lifestyle and consumption. The United States as a nation has the highest ecological footprint in the world. Reduce Reduce means cutting down on what you buy and consumes as well as reducing what you throw away. When you concentrate on reducing the things you buy, or avoiding products with one-use packaging, you are preventing trash from being created in the first place. Reuse Reusing an item includes repairing it when it's broken, donating it to charity or selling it to someone else to use. It's also where you can be most creative, such as using worn-out jeans for craft projects. Reusing is better for the environment than recycling, becuase when something is reused, it doesn't need to be reprocessed before it can be used again. There are many items around your home or classroom that can be reused. Recycle Curbside recycling programs are now available to almost half the American population, but there's more to recycling than setting recycling bins out on the curb. In order to make recycling work, people must buy produts that are made fully or partially out of recycled materials. Recycling only works if there is a market for recycled products. Often in recycling, paper is made intopaper; aluminum cans are remade into more aluminum cans, and so on. However, some trailblazing companies are making new and innovative products. Battle of the bulbs Compact fluorescent light bulbs, also known as CFLs, use 75 percent less energy and last 10 times longer than conventional incandescent bulbs. If every home in America replaced just one incandescant light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified CFL, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivaleent to that of 800,00 cars. Replacing a 60-watt incandescent bulb with a 13-watt CFL- each providing the same amount of light- can save at least $30 in energy costs over the life of the bulb. ecycling According to the Environmental protection Agency, the metals, plastics, and rechargeable batteries from recycled cell phones can all be reused to create new products. Cell phones contain gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, tin, and zinc which can be recovered in the recycling process. They can be used to make jewerly, electronics, and even art. The plastics recovered from cell phones or to create plastic garden furniture, license plate frames, or replacement auto parts. The rechargeable batteries can be recycled into other rechargeable battery products. Phantom loads Devices such as microwave ovens, cordless phones, cable boxes, televisions and computers use electricity for built-in clocks and timers even when they are turned off. To reduce phantom energy use, unplug nonessential appliances and devices, especially when you're on vacation.