A Super Easy, Cheap, Tasty, Green, Summery Change!

For all of you looking for a way to go green without looking like a hippie, spending any extra money, or sacrificing anything, here's a super easy way! When you get ice cream this summer, get it in a cone instead of a dish. Once you finish eating, there's no trash left behind besides a sleeve that comes with them sometimes, which is usually recyclable. With a dish, there's the dish itself (usually styrofoam) and the spoon.

There's an easy change if there ever was one. Now go out and get some ice cream! :)

Crazy Crayons

Millions of broken crayons are thrown away every day! Now that we are nearing the end of the school year (yay!), you're probably getting rid of some of your old school supplies. Crazy Crayons, a Wisconsin-based company, recycles your crayons for you. Their website states the importance of crayon recycling:

"More than 12 Million Crayons are made in the US, every day! 100 new crayons equals about one pounds, lets do some math. 12 Million Crayons equals about 120,000 pounds. That's 60 Tons of Crayons made every day with petroleum based wax that eventually ends up in our landfills when they don't have to!"

The crayon recycling program has collected over 62,000 pounds of unwanted crayons since the program started. When the shipments of crayons arrive to be recycled, the boxes of crayons are sorted at a center that employs people with developmental disabilities. Then they get melted down, strained, sterilized, and hand poured into beautiful new crayons!

Set up a recycling collection box in your school, place of worship, or community center and join in this great recycling program. Or if you have a lot of old crayons, pack them all in a box and send them in!

To learn more, visit their website: crazycrayons.com

Change the way you think

How much water does it take to make...
...one slice of bread? 10 gallons
...one hamburger? 4,000 - 18,000 gallons
...one medium sized apple? 18.5 gallons
...one sheet of printer paper? 2.6 gallons
...one cotton t shirt? 400 gallons
...one latte? 50 gallons
 
Check out this video by the World Wildlife Fund

 

This video's message is true: We have to change the way we think. Whether you are picking out a car or an afternoon snack, take some time to think about it's impact on the world. 

Water is just the beginning: Were the workers who made it treated fairly? What resources were used in making, processing, packaging, and shipping it? Will it become trash soon or last a long time? Is there a more eco-friendly option? 

We can change our politicians and our lightbulbs, but for real change to happen, we have to change the way we think. 

Why Not to buy Bottled Water

Would you buy something if you knew you could get an unlimited amount of it easily for free? Well, you probably have. Think about bottled water. Annual worldwide bottled water sales are estimated to be around $50 too $100 billion a year. But what’s wrong with bottled water? Well, here are 5 reasons:

1. Making the plastic bottles requires up to 47 million gallons of oil each year. 

2. The bottles travel from where they are bottled to you in a truck, plane, or boat - burning fossil fuels along the way. 

3. Less then 1/2 of the Fiji Islanders have a reliable source of safe drinking water. But a factory there produces millions of water bottles and ships them to the US (a country where water comes freely from the tap.)

4. Only a few of the bottles get recycled. Most of them sit in landfills for thousands of years. Or they sit in parks, beaches, forests, or sidewalks as litter.
5. Bottled water costs more per gallon than gas, as this poster shows:

So, why do people buy it if it's so bad? Most people's answers are that they think tap water is gross. Well actually...tap water is much more regulated by the government than bottled water. And if you'd rather be on the safe side, you can easily buy a filter to make sure your water is clean. Also, another argument is that bottled water is convenient. I must agree, it is convenient to have water readily available. But you can solve that problem too, buy taking about five seconds to put a reusable water bottle or two in your car.

So, if you are looking for one thing to do to help the earth, here's one: Don't Buy Bottled Water!