Trashy News

DIY Toxin-Free Cleaning Guide
We love all the new non-toxic cleaning products on the market. But did you know that baking soda, vinegar, borax, salt, citrus and even ketchup can be effective, non-toxic cleaners? Your grandparents did. They are cheap, readily available, and you don't have to worry about potentially harmful fumes. - READ MORE
The 10 Most (and Least) Green Take-out Containers
Your food can't go everywhere exposed; it needs packaging. Unfortunately, much of that packaging takes massive amounts of energy to create and doesn't properly decompose. We've rated some common carriers on a scale from 1 (bad) to 5 (good). -READ MORE
Frightening Fact: Bottled Water Fad
Members of the United Nations estimate that if the world took half of what it currently spends on bottled water ($100 billion annually) and invested it in water infrastructure and treatment, everyone in the world could have access to clean drinking water.

But bottled water is cleaner, right? Actually, the U.S. EPA sets more stringent quality standards for tap water than the FDA does for bottled beverages, and roughly 40% of bottled water is actually just tap water.

1.5 billion barrels of oil are consumed each year to produce the plastic for water bottles, enough to fuel 100,000 cars.
According to the Container Recycling Institute, only 14 percent of plastic water bottles are recycled.

A water bottle in a landfill or lying around as litter will take over 1,000 years to biodegrade.

For more information visit: www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/Bottled020606.cfm
Trash Facts
Every year we fill enough garbage trucks to form a line that would stretch from the earth, halfway to the moon.
Shopping Habits
Americans buy 2,300,000 pairs of shoes a day – enough to cover the bottom of a 17-acre closet with shoe boxes.
Trash Tidbits

In 1995, the United States generated 208 million tons of municipal solid waste, an average of 4.3 pounds of waste per person per day (EPA, 1996)

Enough aluminum is thrown away to rebuild our commercial air fleet every 3 months (source).

Everyday Americans buy 62 million newspapers and throw out 44 million. That’s the equivalent of dumping 500,000 trees into a landfill every week. If everyone in the U.S. recycled just 1/10 of their newsprint, we would save the estimated equivalent of about 25 million trees a year (source).