what are you doing to help the planet?

so i read a "green" mom blog often and her recent post was challenging her readers to watch "the story of stuff" i have tried to watch this before but since it is sort of long i have not taken the time. well i just watched it. VERY CHALLENGING!! a lot of it is political and some of the stuff is over my head but the basic premise is we have too much stuff, we are making more stuff and we are running out of places to put the stuff we already have to make room for the new stuff that we really dont need anyway.

so i encourage you if you have time to watch this video. it is 20 minutes long but worth it. i watched it and now i know how i can make a difference. here is a list of facts from a print out you can get from the site.


Facts from
The Story of Stuff

• In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s natural
resources base have been consumed.
• In the United States, we have less than 4% of our original
forests left.
• Forty percent of waterways in the US have become undrinkable.
• The U.S.has 5% of the world’s population but consumes 30% of
the world’s resources and creates 30% of the world’s waste.
• If everybody consumed at U.S. rates, we would need 3 to 5
planets.
• There are over 100,000 synthetic chemicals in commerce today.
• Only a handful of synthetic chemicals have even been tested for
human health impacts and NONE have been tested for synergistic health impacts.
• In the U.S., industry admits to releasing over 4 billion pounds of
toxic chemicals a year.
• The average U.S. person now consumes twice as much as they
did 50 years ago.
• We each see more advertisements in one year than a people 50
years ago saw in a lifetime.
• In the U.S. our national happiness peaked sometime in the
1950s.
• In the U.S., we spend 3–4 times as many hours shopping as our
counterparts in Europe do.
• Average U.S. house size has doubled since the 1970s.
• Each person in the United States makes 4 1/2 pounds of garbage a day. That is twice what we each made thirty years ago.
• For every one garbage can of waste you put out on the curb, 70
garbage cans of waste were made upstream to make the junk
in that one garbage can you put out on the curb.