New Year's Football: Go Green

Whether or not you are watching football for New Year's Day, Buildipedia's Go Green Channel wishes you a very healthy 2010.

Here is a list of the Eagles' favorite environmental factoids:

* We each throw away our own weight in packaging every month.

* $1 out of every $11 Americans spend for food goes for packaging.

* In just one week of recycling, we can each save 17 trees.

* Each of us generates 4.5 pounds of trash every day.

* Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours - just about enough time to watch an Eagles game!

* Last year 54 billion cans were recycled, saving energy equivalent to 15 million barrels of crude oil - America's entire gas consumption for one day!  An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!

* If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.

* A standard shower head uses about 5-7 gallons of water per minute.  Use a "low-flow" shower head to help reduce water use by 50% or more. They typically cut the flow rate to 2.5 gallons per minute, or less.

* Turn off the water faucet when brushing your teeth! This simple act can save 3-4 gallons of water every time you brush.

* Instead of loading up on bottled water, install a water filter on your home faucet. That $5 filter will give you 40,000 8-ounce glasses of purified tap water.

* A 60-watt incandescent bulb lasts about 750 hours; a fluorescent bulb with 1/3 the wattage will generate the same light and burn for 7,500 to 10,000 hours, lasting seven to ten years!

* If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR compact fluorescent light bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, equivalent to more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to removing one million cars from the road.

* Styrofoam is NOT recyclable. It will never disintegrate and can not be made into new Styrofoam. A Styrofoam cup used today will still be sitting in a land fill 500 years from now.

* When it comes time to do the laundry, you can cut your energy use and washing costs in half by switching to cold water.