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 Green Facts |
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| New and improved high-efficiency models use less than 1.3 gallons per flush—that's at least 60 percent less than their older, less efficient counterparts. Compared to a 3.5 gallons per flush toilet, a WaterSense labeled toilet could save a family of four more than $90 annually on their water bill, and $2,000 over the lifetime of the toilet. |
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| A typical 1,700 square-foot wood-frame house requires the equivalent of 1 acre of forest timber. |
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| New home construction consumes two-fifths of all the lumber and plywood used in the U.S. each year. |
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| Indoor air quality can be as much as 100 times worse than outside air quality according to the US EPA. |
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| Replacing one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (energy efficient bulb) will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. (Inconvenient Truth) |
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| The average person discards 4.6 pounds of solid waste — garbage — a day. Nationally, that translates to 251 million tons a year. (Environmental Protection Agency) |
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| Knock 10 percent off your annual heating bill by rolling your thermostat back 10 degrees to 15 degrees when you're not home. It's a myth that your furnace expends so much energy warming the place back up that it's not worth it. (U.S. Department of Energy) |
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| The energy that seeps through U.S. windows each winter is the equivalent of all the oil that flows through the Alaska pipeline each year. It's not just the glass, it's the aluminum frame too. Wood-framed windows retain twice as much heat as the standard aluminum variety. (Seattle.gov) |
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| If you spend 10 minutes in the shower, you've just sent 20 gallons of water down the drain. A bath uses 50 gallons. (US Geological Survey) |
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| That eternally gurgling toilet is wasting 200 gallons a day. To find out if you have a leaky commode, place a drop of food coloring in the tank. Don't flush. If it shows up in the toilet bowl, you've got a leak. (EPA) |
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| If your leaky faucet sends one drip per second down the drain, you're wasting 3,000 gallons a year. (EPA) |
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| The typical family uses nearly a third of its household water outdoors, sprinkling that thirsty lawn and pretty shrubberies. Experts say more than half of that evaporates or runs off due to overwatering. Drip irrigation, on the other hand, uses 20 percent to 50 percent less water than conventional sprinklers. (EPA) |
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| Your refrigerator is responsible for a quarter of your electricity bill. That icebox uses 7 percent of the nation's electricity. That's the energy equivalent of half the power generated by the nation's nuclear power plants. (Seattle.gov) |
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| If you stacked up the 4 million tons of office paper Americans throw away every year, you could build a 12-foot-high paper wall from New York to San Francisco. (Northern Illinois University) |
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| Some 90 percent of the energy your washing machine uses is spent on heating the water. Cold water's just fine — and your jeans won't shrink as much. (Oberlin College) |
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| Other Sites Listing Interesting Green Facts |
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