Love our Earth Day - EVERY day

HAPPY EARTH DAY! I wish this day occurred throughout the year. It's a reminder of our responsibility to this planet and future generations. We can all do our part. We must all do our part.

EPA: Every year nearly 900,000,000 trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills.

Via Livescience:

• An estimated 18 million acres (7.3 million hectares) of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
• About half of the world's tropical forests have been cleared (FAO)
• Forests currently cover about 30 percent of the world’s land mass (National Geographic)
• Forest loss contributes between 6 percent and 12 percent of annual global carbon dioxide emissions (Nature Geoscience)
• About 36 football fields worth of trees lost every minute (World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

Photo credit: thenaturaleye.wordpress.com

Photo credit: Greenpeace

Facts you should know from 1bagatatime.com:

• Just 14 plastic bags contain enough petroleum to drive a car a mile.
• Americans throw away an estimated 380 billion plastic bags a year.
• In manufacturing, paper bags emit 50% more global warming gasses than plastic bags.
• Paper bags do not biodegrade in landfills (due to lack of oxygen).

Not just a mid-ocean issue...

Data from the Pacific Institute - It is estimated that in 2006:

• Producing the bottles for American consumption required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation
• Bottling water produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide
• It took 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water

REDUCE - REUSE - RECYCLE - It's not just a catchphrase!

Respect, Love and Care for the Earth we all call home and share.

Love, Mother Earth and Adrienne :)