AT HOME
Take shorter Showers. Every two minutes you save on your shower can conserve more than ten gallons of water. And that can addup: if everyone in the country saved just one gallon from their daily shower, over the course of a year it would equal twice the amount of freshwater withdrawn from the Great Lakes every day. The Great Lakes are the world's largest source of freshwater.
Recycle. If everyone in America simply separated the paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum products from the trash and tossed them into a recycling bin, we could decreasse the amount of waste sent to landfills by 75 percent, Currently, it takes an area the size of Pennsylvania to dump all our waste each year.
Light Bulbs. Dust your light bulbs and change them-to compact fluorescent-only when they burn out. you'll increase energy efficiency and light output, and because electricity production generates pollution, you'll also help promote cleaner air. If every American home changed out just five regular light fixtures or the bulbs in them with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent ones, we'd keep more then one trillion pounds of greenhouse gases out of our air-equal to the emissions of eight million cars. That's $6 billion in energy savings for Americans.
In the Yard
Sprinklers. Try to use your sprinklers in early morning or evening. The average lawn needs only about one hour of watering per week. In summer, outdoor water usage accounts for 40 percent of household water bills. The irrigation of U.S. lawns and landscapes claims an estimated 7.9 billion gallons of water a day-avolume that would fill fourteen billion six-packs of beer.
Drip Irrigation. For flower beds and gardens, use drip irrigation or soaker hoses instead of regular sprinklers. You can save up to 70 percent of the water you would typically use because evaporation will be minimal and only the base of the plants will be receiving water as opposed to the leaves and foliage.
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