food for thought

Tomorrow night The Green Mama is speaking at our women's spring potluck. As an organizer for the event, I have been culling "green tips" to litter the tables. Here are a few I've copied down with a little fear and trembling:

:: For every one garbage can you put out at the curb, 70 cans were filled by all the processes needed in order to make it.

:: 10 chemicals are banned from cosmetics in the U.S.; 1,100 chemicals are banned from cosmetics in Europe.

:: Average daily water use in America is 80 gallons; the rest of the world averages just 2.5 gallons.

:: A single quart of oil that seeps into the ground can pollute 250,000 gallons of drinking water.

:: The U.S. exports 1.1 million tons of potatoes annually and imports 1.4 million tons. (Can we say giant waste of oil???)

:: A mass of plastic garbage at least the size of Texas floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. (Thanks, Tracey, for that horrifying fact.)

:: If every citizen ate just one meal a week of all local, organic foods, U.S. oil consumption would decrease by 1.1 billion barrels weekly!

:: In the U.S., children ages 6 to 11 spend an average of 30 hours a week looking at a TV or computer monitor.

So, what's the moral of this ugly eco-story? Buy local. Read labels. Consume less. Say no to plastic. Don't let the water run. Recycle, recycle, recycle. And, by all means, send your kids outside.