The Footprint

where will your feet take you?

This year, resolve to do more! Even simple things can mean big savings for you and your family. Here are some thought starters: 

1. Turn it down!

• By turning down your central heating thermostat one degree, fuel consumption is cut by as much as 10%.

2. Schedule a home energy audit with RPU today!

• If every gas-heated home were properly caulked and weather-stripped, enough natural gas would be saved each year to heat another 4 million homes.
• Insulating your attic reduces the amount of energy loss in most houses by up to 20%.
• Request a home energy usage history from RPU. Once you are familiar with your monthly usage, you can find ways to cut back!

3. The No More Plastic Pledge! Go Reuseable! 

• Switch to your own reusable coffee/water thermos or cup. Take it with you wherever you go!
• North Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
• Every year some 45,000 tons of plastic waste are dumped into the world’s oceans.
• One of the results of this is that up to one million seabirds and one hundred thousand marine mammals are killed each year by plastic trash such as fishing gear, six-pack yokes, sandwich bags, and styrofoam cups.
• Packaging accounts for 50 percent of all paper produced in North America, 90 percent of all glass, and eleven percent of aluminum.
• Paper cups consume trees, water, and chemicals, and dump them into streams and landfills- they are not re-cyclable. Paper cups are often wax-coated which reduces their bio-degradeability futher. Paper products make up over 40 percent by weight , slightly higher by volume - of this country’s municipal solid waste, by far the largest contributor. Paper Recycling and its role in Solid Waste Management. Every year nearly 900,000,000 trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills.

4. TP!

• If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 1,000 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save: 373,000 trees, 1.48 million cubic feet of landfill space, and 155 million gallons of water.
• Try Seventh Generation or similar products.
• Better yet, consider switching to cloth!

5. Take your own bag!

•  Purchase your own canvas shopping bags. Grocery stores are now making these available for sale as well. When you are done shopping, put them back in your car right away so they are available for your next stop.
• Between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic grocery bags are consumed worldwide each year.
• As well as being an eyesore (they are everywhere!), plastic bags do an incredible amount of environmental damage. This is a huge problem, considering they will take between 20 and 1000 years to decompose.
• Plastic bags kill large numbers of wildlife each year. In the water, plastic bag pollution harm birds, whales, seals, and turtles as they develop intestinal blockages from ingesting the bags. Plastic bags also clog drains and waterways, threatening natural and urban environments.

6. How big is your footprint? Calculate your personal emissions.

• Visit the US EPA website and calculate your personal emissions. This will really help you focus on areas where you can reduce your consumption. You will need your most recent utility bills and 10-15 minutes.
• Google “footprint calculator” for additional sites and information to help you get started on your way to reduction.