P.W. PAWS CHALLENGES YOU TO ADOPT AN EARTH-FRIENDLY LIFESTYLE!

Do you use the Earth’s resources in a way that makes sure there will be enough for others – today and tomorrow?  Do you and your family do all that you can to create an environmentally friendly household? 

Follow these tips from P.W. Paws, and see what a difference it can make in your life.  By adopting some of these simple steps in your house, you can help ensure that our Earth’s precious and limited resources are treated with greater care.

After you’ve checked out P.W. Paws' recommendations, you can find more great information about the environment and what you can do to help at these websites:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency www.epa.gov/highschool/

Earth 911 www.earth911.org

If you have other good tips to share, let PW Paws know!

GARBAGE

The average American generates about 3½ pounds of garbage every day.  The landfills are filling up.  Many communities object to the building of new landfills and incinerators in their area because of fears of contamination leaking into the groundwater and other environmental concerns.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a place for all our garbage.  You and your family can help by creating less garbage!

• Recycle!  If your household does not currently recycle, start now – it’s easy!  Don’t throw common recyclable items like cans, glass, plastic and paper into the garbage can.  Get sorting guidelines from your local recycling center or trash collection service.  If your city does not offer curbside pickup of recyclable items, take yours to the closest recycling center.  Check out the Earth 911 website for specific information about recycling in your community www.earth911.org.

• Use cloth bags.  How many paper and plastic bags does your family collect after a week’s worth of shopping – 10? 15? More?  That’s a lot of paper and plastic.  Saving paper saves trees.  Not using plastic bags saves oil.  It takes energy to produce the bags and resources to manage the waste if the bags aren’t recycled.  Assemble a supply of cloth or nylon bags, and take them with you when you go shopping.  Keep them in a convenient place, like the car.  Next time the store clerk says “Paper or plastic?” pull out your own bags and say “Cloth!”

• Reduce the amount of paper you use and discard.  How often do you discard a piece of paper that still has a blank side left?  How much junk mail goes straight into the trash or the recycle bin at your house?  Before you throw that paper out, why not use the blank side for things like shopping lists, phone messages, doodles, etc.?  Keep stacks of paper with one blank side, including junk mail, in locations where paper is used in your house – like by the phone.  Draw a big X on the side that’s already used to avoid confusion.  And when using new paper for things like homework and letters, try writing on both sides.

• Compost it!  Cooking scraps and food left on plates is only garbage if you treat it that way.  About a quarter of your household trash is actually organic materials that could be composted instead of rotting in our landfills.  Composting is a process that can turn your kitchen and yard wastes into fertilizer, which can then be used to enrich the soil.  If your home has a yard or garden, composting can also eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers.  You can purchase a composter, or build one in your own backyard.  The Earth 911 website has great information about composting, including how to build your own compost site.  Go to www.earth911.org and click on “Organics and Composting.”

• Transition from paper to cloth products.  Paper napkins are inexpensive and convenient, but they have their environmental cost.  If you use two paper napkins per day, that’s over 700 per year!  Use cloth napkins at your dinner table.  Get in the habit of using dish towels, sponges, and rags for jobs you generally use paper towels for, like washing glass or mirrors and mopping up spills.  Keep cloth towels in your kitchen and bathroom, and use them to dry your hands instead of paper towels.  Your cloth napkins and towels, as well as old rags and sponges, can all be washed and reused.  Plus the money you’ll save in paper products will more than offset the cost of purchasing some additional everyday cloth napkins and towels if necessary.

• Broken stuff?  Try to repair it before you throw it out!  Do you have items sitting around your house unused because they’re broken or need mending?  If it can’t be fixed, recycle as much of it as possible.  Repair the items you can, rather than throw them out and buy new ones.  If you cannot personally repair or mend it, look in the yellow pages or on-line to find a place that can – electrical and appliance repair services, shoe repair stores, seamstresses and tailors, etc.  You may even save money by repairing rather than buying new.  If items are too costly to repair, see if you can find a service organization that would be happy to have them as is.

• Share your trash!  Have you heard the expression “one person’s trash is another’s treasure”?  Clean out your closets and storage areas, and round up items and clothing you are no longer using.  Ask your friends and relatives if they can use any of it.  Donate unwanted items and clothing to service organizations like the Goodwill or Salvation Army.  Have a yard sale, or take items to a secondhand store for resale.  Share the items you no longer want or need with someone who will treasure your trash!

WATER

Water is the substance of life on Earth.  It’s about 70% of your body weight, and about 70% of the planet, too.  Water from underground aquifers is often used faster than it can be replenished.  Plus, great amounts of energy are used to transport, treat and heat the water we use, using up fossil fuels and contributing to air pollution. We need to use our water resources carefully.  Conserving water can help the environment, and reducing water use in your household can also help to lower your water and sewer bills.

• Plug those leaks!  In just one day, a slow drip from a leaky faucet can waste up to five gallons of water, a steady drip can waste 20 gallons, and a leaking toilet can waste 200 gallons!  Find the leaks around sinks, showers, tubs and toilets in your house.  Look for puddles, drips, water stains, or mildew.  Listen for toilets that continue to run.  Try this trick – add food coloring to the toilet tank (not the bowl) and flush, then check back in half an hour to see if any dye seeped into the toilet bowl.  If it did, then you have a leak.  Check your water meter to see if it moves while water in not being used.  If it does, then you have a leak.  If you cannot fix the leaks yourself, call a plumber.

• Don’t waste water with every flush!  The average toilet tank holds about six gallons of water, but only two to three gallons are actually needed per flush.  Still, all six gallons go down the drain every time you flush.  Displace some of the water in the tank with a toilet dam.  A commercial dam will save up to 2½ gallons per flush, or about 3,000 flushes per year.  Or you can make your own using a half- gallon plastic jug.  Remove the labels, fill it about half full of gravel, secure the lid tightly, and place it in the corner of the tank (make sure it doesn’t interfere with any moving parts of the toilet).  You home made dam will save a half gallon of water per flush, or about 550 flushes per year!

• Save water while you wash your face and brush your teeth!  More than half the water used during your daily routine of washing your face and brushing your teeth is wasted.  Leaving the water running for three minutes in the morning and three minutes in the evening while brushing your teeth wastes up to nine gallons of water per day!  Let the faucet run while wetting your toothbrush and filling a glass for rinsing, then turn it off while you brush.  When washing your face, run the faucet to wet your face or washcloth, turn it off to wash, then back on to rinse.

• Install water-saving devices on showers and faucets.  You could be saving more than 50% of the water you use in the shower and at the sink.  Install a low-flow showerhead in your shower and faucet aerators in your sinks.  Installing water-saving devices on showers and faucets is an easy and inexpensive way to reduce your water use.

• Have a cold drink from the fridge!  How much water goes down the drain before you get it cold enough to drink?  If you let the water run like this once a day, you could be wasting more than 500 gallons per year!  Keep a jug of water in the refrigerator, and you’ll have refreshing drinking water available all day long without running the faucet.

ENERGY

Americans use large amounts of our planet’s supply of fossil fuels – petroleum, natural gas, and coal – to provide energy to our homes.  In one year, an American uses as much of these fossil fuels as someone in a developing country uses in his or her entire life.  The burning of fossil fuels leads to air pollution, global warning and acid rain.  Your household could be getting more comfort and benefit from the energy you use, and be saving fossil fuels at the same time.  Plus, saving energy usually means saving money too!

• Turn it off!  You can save money and energy every time you leave a room – just turn things off.  Get in the habit of turning the light switch off as you leave an empty room.  When you’re not watching or listening, turn off the TV, the VCR, the CD player, or the computer monitor. 

• Wear a sweater!  In the winter, does your household set the thermostat a little warmer than it needs to be?  In the daytime, try to keep the thermostat set between 65 and 68 degrees – and wear heavier clothing.  At night, keep it between 55 and 60 degrees – and cuddle up with more blankets.

• Keep that good air inside!  Air leaks around doors, windows and electrical outlets can represent as much energy loss as leaving a window open all the time!  That’s a big loss of energy that should be heating or cooling your home.  Determine where your air leaks are by feeling around doors, windows, electrical outlets or cracks.  Plug those leaks with inexpensive items from the hardware store – weather stripping, outlet insulators, window putty, caulking, etc.

• Keep your fridge in shape!  Your refrigerator uses more electricity than any other appliance in your house, so try to use it more efficiently.  Test your refrigerator door seal by sliding a piece of paper between the seal and the fridge – if the paper slides out easily, replace the seal or add low-cost weatherstrip tape.  Vacuum or wipe the condenser coils (located in the back or behind the front grill) of your refrigerator several times a year to remove the dust.  Let hot food cool before putting it into the fridge. Decide what you want before you open the fridge, and don’t keep the door open any longer than necessary.  And don’t keep it too cold – set the refrigerator to about 38 degrees, and the freezer to about 5 degrees. 

• Tune them up!  Tune up your furnace and air conditioner on a regular basis.  Contact a service company for appointments to have your furnace and central air conditioning systems checked, cleaned and adjusted as often as recommended – usually once a year. And make sure you change out the filters at least once every two months.

• Do the laundry right and do less of it!  Do all your clothes really need to be washed after you’ve worn them only once?  Wear your clothes until they are actually dirty.  Use a wet cloth and a little soap to get out a spot when the rest of the garment is clean.  When you do wash your clothes, you can save more than half the energy costs by using cold water (unless you have a greasy stain, a cold water wash usually works just as well as hot) and always use cold water to rinse.  Make sure you wash a full load.  Use a clothesline instead of the dryer whenever possible.  And be sure to clean the dryer’s lint filter after every use.   

TRANSPORTATION

In America, we are fortunate that almost every household has an automobile and we have good roads to drive them on.  However, our cars need gasoline, and this fuel costs more than its price per gallon.  Gasoline is a petroleum product, so it’s also a fossil fuel.  When fossil fuels are burned, they contribute to air pollution, global warming and acid rain.  Make your travel more planet-friendly!

• Car Pool It!  It’s simple logic – every time two people share the same car instead of each driving themselves, the energy use and air pollution is cut in half!  Every time you’re going somewhere and other family members or friends that live near you need to go too – to work, a ball game, church, a friend’s house, the gym, a party, wherever! – why not go together and share the ride?

• Get physically fit!  Look for opportunities to leave the car at home and go somewhere on foot or bicycle, or even roller blades!  Review the places you drive to each week, and try to think of routes that you could regularly walk or bicycle instead.  Use a backpack to carry your belongings or purchases.

• Leave the driving to someone else!  Do you often use your car to travel when you could use public transportation instead?   Even a mostly empty transit bus uses less fuel per person than one person commuting the same distance alone.  Research the public transportation options where you live – buses, subway, etc. – and see if you can replace some of the routes you now drive with mass transit.  You’ll be helping to improve air quality, save gasoline, and reduce the wear and tear on our roads (and on your car, too!).  Using public transportation might even save you money in gasoline, tolls and parking.

• Keep your car in shape!  A tuned-up car gets up to 40% better gas mileage than one that’s not.  Check your car’s owners manual or consult with a mechanic, and put your car on a regular maintenance schedule.  Get a tire gauge and use it periodically – keep the tires inflated to the pressure printed on them.

• Combine your errands.  Plan ahead so you can get as much done as possible every time you take the car out.  Talk to your family members, and combine errands that involve destinations in the same direction.  If you can cut back on the number of trips required, you’ll also free up some time in your busy life!

Talk to your family about adopting a more Earth-friendly lifestyle.  See what ideas you can come up with to help our environment.

P.W. Paws thanks you, and the Earth thanks you, too!