Presentation:  This presentation is available at my website http://myhome.sunyocc.edu/~clancyt/

 

I have tried to site my sources throughout and you are welcome to use my examples.

 

My email is clancyt@sunyocc.edu

Resources

 

Websites:  There are MANY great resources.  Here are just a few:

www.H2Oconserve.org Very interesting look at water over all sectors

www.designworksarchitects.com Sustainability 101 in design

www.nsidc.org  National Snow and Ice Data

http://geology.com/sea-level-rise  Interesting interactive graph for rising sea level

www.effectofglobalwarming.com  Interesting site on global warming.  Shocking pictures

http://www.need.org/EnergyInfobooks.php Great resource for statistic about energy; production and consumption

http://www.pluspackaging.com/ Commercial website for bag, packaging, etc

www.epa.gov  EPA’s website

www.earth911.com  Environmental website –recycling focus

www.energystar.gov  Good resource for household energy statistics

http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/ Website to mobilize

www.ipcc.ch Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report

http://unfccc.int/2860.php UN’s website on global change

www.pewclimate.org Pew Center on climate change

www.aashe.org   Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education

http://www2.aashe.org/heasc/about.php Higher Education Association Sustainability Consortium

www.storyofstuff.com This site promotes a movie called “The Story of Stuff”

www.SustainableTable.org Website shows what is required to get food to our tables

www.newenergychoices.org has some nice links under the resources area

www.printgreener.com Website has numbers for printing waste

http://www.esdtoolkit.org Education for Sustainable Development Toolkit

 

 

More Facts You Could Use

 

–           To make a cup of coffee it takes about 37 gallons of water (including the growing and processing of the beans.)  Tea requires 8 gallons of water.

–           Grain fed cattle provide about 1 pound of beef for every 10 to 16 pounds of feed they consume.

–           For every one garbage can of waste you put out to the curb, 70 garbage cans of waster were made upstream to make the stuff in the can.

–           Growing wheat requires 156 gallons per pound.  60 gallons of water are required to produce a pound of corn.

–           To make a pound of cheese it takes about 600 gallons of water.

–           It takes 1,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat.

–           It takes between 3.5 and 6 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. 

–           Iowa’s ethanol plants use 400 million gallons of water a day (this is the same amount a town of 10,000 people typically uses in a year.)

–           It takes between 1 and 2.5 gallons of water to refine a gallon of gasoline.

–           In 2006, the DOE estimated that one day of gasoline refining in the US (384 million gallons of gas) required over a billion gallons of water.

–           Paper makes up about 40% of American’s garbage.

–           In 2005, Americans threw out 94.8 million tons of paper and 26.7 million tons of plastic.

–           Recycling a single newspaper can save 3.5 gallons of water.

–           It takes about 1.5 gallons of water to produce the typical bottle of water.

–           The average American consumes twice as much today as they did 50 years ago.

–           66% of the US petroleum in used for transportation, 25% for industry, 6% for residential and commercial applications and 2% for electricity.

–           In average winds of 14 to 15 mph, a wind turbine can produce 1.1 to 1.2 million kWh per year.

–           The world population in 2005 was 6,451,000,000.  The US population in 2005 was 296,410,000.

–           2005 World energy consumption was 421.51 Q (Q is 1015 Btu)

–           US energy consumption was 99.74 Q (Q is 1015 Btu)

–           In the US, refrigerators alone use the electrical output of about 25 large power plants.  This is nearly 7% of the energy we use in this country.  (We use 3,953 Billion kWh in the US.)

–           With our typical power generation, 1.5 lbs of CO2 is released into the atmosphere per kWh. 

–           If you have a typical showerhead you use about 5 gallons of water per minute in the shower.  A low flow shower head costs about $10 and uses only 1.5 gallons per minute. 

–           Cost of operation for 10,000 hours of light (1600 lumens)

–           Incandescent Light (IL): fixed cost of $3.20 and  variable cost of 1000 kWh times the electricity cost /kWh   y = 1000 x + 3.20

–           Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL): fixed cost of $7.97 and variable cost of 230 kWh time the electricity cost /kW y = 230x + 7.97

–           400 reams = 1 ton of paper (24 trees). The production of 1 ton of printer paper uses 11,134 kWh (same amount of energy used by an avg. household in 10 months), produces 19,075 gallons of waste water, requires the use of 98 tons of various resources, produces 2,278 lbs of solid waste, and produces 5,690 lbs of green house gases (the equivalent of 6 months of car exhaust).