green is universal

Green Tips from Tom Kostigen's "Green Book"

Posted at 01:39 PM on October 31, 2007 comments (0)

Thomas Kostigen, Character Road Trip on USA

On November 6th at 8/7c on USA, there's a special green edition of "Character Road Trip" featuring Thomas M. Kostigen, co-author of New York Times bestseller "The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet, One Small Step at a Time."

Here are a few simple green tips from Thomas' book. Enjoy!

UNPLUG YOUR POWER: 10% of the electricity used in your home is burned by communication devices and appliances when they are turned off! If every US household just unplugged their computers and cell phone chargers when they were not being used, collectively we'd save over $100million- enough to provide free healthcare to every low-income child under the age of 5 in the state of CA.

USE FEWER NAPKINS EVERYWHERE:
There's no need to grab a huge stack of napkins from the concession stand when you know you'll use only a couple. Each American consumes an average of 2200 standard 2-ply per year (or just over 6 per day). If everyone in the US used an average of 1 fewer napkin per day, more than a billion pounds of napkins could be saved from landfills each year. A stack of napkins this size could fill the entire Empire State Building.

RUN FULL LOADS IN YOUR DISHWASHER & LAUNDRY:
You'll save energy. And don't pre-rinse your dishes before putting them in. You can save up to 20 gallons of water per dish load, or 7300 gallons over a year. That's as much water as the avg person drinks in a lifetime!

RID YOURSELF OF JUNK MAIL:
The average US household receives 1.5 trees worth of junk mail each year, and many of these trees are thrown right into the trash. If you wan to reduce the amt of junk mail you receive, you'll need to register with the mail preference service. It costs a buck, but you can do it easily online at dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist. For the junk mail you continue to receive, remember to toss it in the recycling bin instead of throwing it out with the garbage. You can even recycle plastic window envelopes. If all Americans recycled their junk mail, $370 million in landfill dumping fees could be saved each year.

ELIMINATE PLASTIC WASTE:
Plastic bags, plastic utensils, disposable containers, paper napkins, and those brown paper bags. Instead use a reusable lunchbox, reusable drink containers, cloth napkins, and silverware. You could save $250 a year and as much weight in waste as the average 9 year-old.

SHARE YOU POPCORN AT THE MOVIES:
You'll save $ and packaging. Americans today consume 17 billion quarts of popcorn each year (54 quarts per person), 30 % of which are eaten at movie theaters, sports events, entertainment arenas, amusement parks. If half the people shared their popcorn, we could save the paper packaging for more than 2.5 billion quart-size servings.

Thomas Kostigen
USA, Character Road Trip
http://usanetwork.com/movies/characterroadtrip/