Kudos to the Reader's Mick Dumke for a nice piece on living green. This is a story that has been done over and over - but Dumke manages to pack it full of informed nuggets.
Filling the tub for a bath uses around 70 gallons of water, while showering generally takes 10 to 25 for every five minutes.
The average car produces five to six metric tons of greenhouse gases each year, and automobiles are responsible for about 9 percent of the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
Don’t rinse the dishes first—just put them in the racks and wait to run the dishwasher until the whole thing’s full. The average machine uses 9 to 12 gallons of water per load, while washing by hand typically takes up to twice as much.
A 2005 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that about 4 percent of all residential electricity went to power TVs, and the bigger the set, the more juice it requires. Cutting TV power consumption by 25 percent a year would save consumers hundreds of millions of dollars and keep about seven million metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, the study estimated.
See the story at http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/greenday.
