Earth Day – Dinner Facts

 Earth Day is a relatively new holiday and was first celebrated on April 22 in 1970.
More than 20 million Americans participated in this first Earth Day celebration.
 April 22 is the first official day of Spring in the Northern hemisphere and of Fall
in the Southern hemisphere and was chosen to be Earth Day for this reason.
 Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to watch a TV for three hours -
it's equivalent to half a gallon of gasoline.
 Never underestimate the importance of recycling: if every newspaper was
recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year. Unfortunately only
27% of all American newspapers are recycled.
 More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square
miles of tinfoil. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
 The garbage in a landfill stays for about 30 years. 
 1/3 of all water is used to flush the toilet.
 For every 2000 pounds of paper (1 ton) recycled, we save 7,000 gallons of
water free from chemicals.
 The amount of wood and paper we throw away is enough to heat 50
million homes for 20 years.
 One gallon of motor oil can contaminate up to 2 million gallons of water.
So dispose of properly!
 Here are examples of the water we use everyday:
o 3-7 gallons for toilet
o 25-30 gallons for a tub
o 50-70 gallons for a 10 minute shower
o 1 washing machine load uses 25-40 gallons

 Here are examples of how long it takes some things take to break down:
o plastics take 500 years
o aluminum cans take 500 years
o organic materials take 6 months
o cotton, rags, paper take 6 months.
 Approximately 1-billion-trees worth of paper is thrown away every year in the
U.S.