Renewable Energy

Fossil fuels contribute significantly to many of the environmental problems we face today- greenhouse gases, air pollution, and water and soil contamination- while renewable energy sources contribute very little or not
at all.

Renewable energy sources will never run out, because they are sustainable, while the world supplies of fossil fuels-our current main source of electricity-will start to run out from the years 2020 to 2060, according to the petroleum industry's best analysts.

Renewable Energy and the Economy

Renewable energy resources are developed locally. The dollars spent on energy stay at home, creating more jobs and fostering economic growth.

New York could generate an estimated $172 million a year in new revenue from unclaimed deposits to fund recycling programs and other environmental needs.

Renewable energy technologies are labor intensive. Jobs evolve directly from the manufacture, design, installation, servicing, and marketing of renewable energy products.

Wind energy results in the highest number of jobs per unit of installed capacity. Recovering 1200 tons or 5% of New York City's solid waste will eliminate the need for one of the five, $ 225 million dollar, waste-to-energy plants
(incinerators) that the City is planning to build.

Jobs in renewable energy technologies arise indirectly from businesses that supply renewable energy companies with raw materials, transportation, equipment, and professional services, such as accounting and clerical
services.

Currently, the United States manufactures about two-thirds of the world's photovoltaic (PV) systems. And it exports about 70% of these PV systems, mostly to developing nations, resulting in annual sales of more than $300
million. As you can see, then, the economic advantages of renewable energy extend far beyond the local economy. The whole country benefits.

Americans' addiction to oil is an unfortunate byproduct of how we live. Unfortunately our sense of entitlement with artificially low oil prices (in Europe, they pay $4 to $5 a gallon!) will cost us far more in the long run as we continue to pay for damage to public health, ecosystems and the air we breathe.

Energy bills for existing U.S. commercial space (approx. 78 billion square feet) total $110 billion annually. The EPA estimates that increasing the energy efficiency of this space could save more than $25 billion.

Renewable Energy, Politics and Economics

Conventional energy sources are vulnerable to political instabilities, trade disputes, embargoes, and other disruptions, renewable energy sources aren't...at all.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that if we displace 10% of our petroleum use for transportation with biofuels, which are produced from organic material, we could save about $15 billion over 10 years. A 20%
displacement could save us about $50 billion. This would strengthen our energy security, as well as our economic and national security.

Atmosphere

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), carbon dioxide is responsible for one-half to two-thirds of our contribution to global warming. Renewable energy technologies, however, can produce heat and electricity with a very low or no amount of carbon dioxide emissions.

Most renewable energy technologies produce little or no pollution such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, and lead, all of which take a dramatic toll on our environment.

In a year, a 250 kW (kilowatt) wind turbine at a favorably windy site can eliminate 500 to 1,000 tons of carbon emissions burned by fossil fuels to create the same amount of energy.

Every kilowatt-hour saved through conservation prevents two pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) from reaching the atmosphere. Atmospheric carbon dioxide contributes to ozone depletion.

The world's wind energy potential is estimated at 10,000 gw (gigawatts). Total installed wind capacity world wide is 3,000 mw (megawatts).

The more fossil fuels we burn, the more air pollution and health problems we endure. Over 17 million people in the U.S. suffer from asthma, a 98% increase from 1979. It's the 3rd leading cause of hospitalization for kids under 15.

Oxygen levels were 35% at the time of the dinosaurs. Today it's 15 to 20% average in cities. If the level drops below 12% our health fails.

Global warming is a serious problem threatening the planet. A one-mile long lake has replaced what was once Arctic ice. Sea levels have risen 4 to 10 inches already. On L.I. it rises 1 in. per decade.

Ice core samples reveal that CO2 levels are the highest they have been in the past 400,000 yrs. The 1990’s was the hottest decade on record.

According to the American Public Transit Association, commuting on mass transit in place of driving cuts hydrocarbon emissions that produce smog by 90%, carbon monoxide emissions by more than 75%, and nitrogen oxides
emissions by up to 75%. Take the bus! Or better yet, ride your bike or walk to work!

Fossil fuels still account for more than 85% of the world's primary energy consumption. The most significant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, which comes mainly from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to generate energy.

What You Can Do

If a window or outside glass area receives a significant amount of sunlight, keep window coverings open to allow the radiation of the sun to warm the area.

According to the American Public Transit Association, commuting on mass transit in place of driving cuts hydrocarbon emissions that produce smog by 90%, carbon monoxide emissions by more than 75%, and nitrogen oxides
emissions by up to 75%. Take the bus! Or better yet, ride your bike or walk
to work!

Just by shutting off the water when you brush your teeth, you alone can save 8 gallons of water.

Venetian blinds should be set at the proper angle to trap air but still let the sunlight in during the heating period.

Blinds can be painted a dark color on one side and light on the other. Face the darker side out in winter for best absorption and the lighter side out in summer for best reluctance of sunlight.

When designing windows, choose the position, angle and size that will permit the entry of winter sunlight but not summer sunlight.

100 bicycles can be produced for the energy and resources it takes to build one medium-size automobile. Commute by bike!

TVs and VCRs alone cost Americans $1 billion a year in electric bills while not in use because they "leak" energy. The energy used creates so much greenhouse gas, it's as if we put an extra 2 million cars on the road and asked them to drive in circles. Look for the Energy Star symbol!

During the winter, you can save as much as 3% of the energy your furnace uses simply by lowering your thermostat 1 *F (if it's set between 65 *F and 72 *F).

Most people use 60-watt incandescent bulbs on their porches or in their back yards. But incandescent are about the least efficient way to light, and they burn out after only 750-1000 hours. Switch to compact fluorescent bulbs!

If every American family recycled their newspapers, approximately 500,000 trees would be saved weekly.

Recycle 1 aluminum can and you save enough energy to run a personal computer for 3 hours.

Substitute a compact fluorescent light for a traditional bulb and you'll keep a half-ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere over the life of the bulb and keep it clean - dirt absorbs light and uses more energy.

Fix a small leaky faucet and you save up to 50 gallons of water per day.

Avoid using plastics unless they are reusable or recyclable.

Save energy by carpooling, biking, walking or using public transportation.

Recycle and close the loop! You're not recycling unless you BUY recycled. Use environmentally sound products with minimum packaging.

Vote for officials who have good environmental records.

Write elected officials and tell them your environmental concerns.

Plant trees, shrubs and buy indoor plants. They replenish the Earth's oxygen supply.

Don't support toxic pesticide use. Buy organic produce and support your local farmers instead.

Volunteer your time and skills at a nature center or environmental resource center and help educate yourself and everyone else.

Keep on learning about issues and actions going on around the world and in your backyard. Contact The Center for Environmental Education to find out more!

Teach friends, fellow students and family by setting an example!! if you convinced 2 people to do something for the environment and the next day they convinced 2 people, and so on, it would take less than a month to get
everyone in the U.S. TO TAKE ACTION.

NO DISPOSABLES

Use lunch boxes or reusable bags. There are many canvas and nylon bags on the market. The ideal choice is a canvas bag made from organic cotton. This is cotton that is grown from seed without pesticides and the fabric is processed without toxic dyes/ bleaches and unnecessary chemicals. If organic cotton is not an option, our second choice is green cotton. In this case the cotton plant is not grown organically but the fabric has been processed free of chemicals. Students who bring paper bags should be required to reuse them when possible. A "ban" on good bags in the garbage
will help students be more aware of their reuse value.

NO PREPACKAGED SINGLE SERVING CONTAINERS

Many parents buy prepackaged individual servings for convenience and for the"treat" value. But since each "treat" creates a single serving of waste, students should ask their parents to buy larger quantities of their favorites such as raisins, yogurt, fruits, chips, apple sauce, desserts and so on. Then individual servings can be packed in a reusable container. Students who bring individually packaged food should be asked to think of a way to reuse the containers/bags or to take them back home to the "source" of the waste.

USE REUSABLES

Use Tupperware" or "Rubbermaid" type durable plastic containers. Reuse plastic food containers such as margarine tubs and yogurt containers. PETE water bottles (Evian, Arrowhead,...) can be used again and again and then
recycled once they crack. Bicycle bottles are not easily recycled, but they will outlast PETE bottles. Check the bottom of all plastic containers for the recycling code to be sure you can recycle them in your community if they crack.

USE RECYCLABLES

To qualify as recyclable, the container must be accepted on your campus or in your community. Aluminum is accepted everywhere. Metal Juice cans are accepted at most recycling centers. But many plastic containers and juice boxes are NOT easy to recycle.

DO NOT BUY NEW PLASTIC FOOD BAGS

If you keep and reuse the bags that food comes wrapped inside, it may not be necessary to buy new plastic food storage bags at all. Kids can carry their sandwiches to school in the same bread bag for several months. Just turn
them inside out wipe with a soapy dishcloth or sponge, rinse and leave out to dry. If food wrapping must be purchased, select unbleached wax paper or cellulose bags. Cellulose, which is made from wood pulp, is preferable.

TAKE LEFTOVERS HOME

Even leftover foods don't have to be garbage. Take leftovers home for the family pet or to compost.

BRING HOME CONTAINERS

Students should be taught to be responsible for the full cycle of their "Zero Waste Lunch" supplies. After all, the lunch and lunch supplies are theirs alone. By taking their containers back home to wash and reuse, students will begin to realize how we are each responsible for the things we use and that materials aren't "finished" just because we are through using them for the moment.

Factoids

Everyone knows that paper is made from trees. One ream of printer paper (500 sheets) uses 6% of an average-sized tree's wood. One tree produces about 17 reams of printer paper, or about 8,500 sheets.

The average person in the United States uses 750 pounds of paper per year-the equivalent of 9 trees. That means we go through over two and a half billion trees each year (281 million people x 9 trees per person =2,529,000,000 trees)

Total world energy use has risen four times since the Second World War.

Doctors attribute 50,000 American deaths per year to airborne participate matter, about one-third of which comes from power plants.

Water Weight
The average bathtub holds 52 gallons of water. That means it takes more than 11 bathtubs of water to make 1 burger (600 gallons per hamburger/52 gallons per bathtub = 11.5 bathtubs).

The geothermal energy in the uppermost six miles of the Earth's crust amounts to 50,000 times the energy of all oil and gas resources in the world!

New York City generates between 27,000 and 30,000 tons of solid waste daily.

Oxygen levels were 35% at the time of the dinosaurs. Today it's 15 to 20% average in cities. If the level drops below 12% our health fails.

Americans are 5% of the Earth's population, yet we are responsible for 25% of the world's annual oil consumption.

The U.S. has just 3% of the world's known oil reserves. The Middle East has 65%.

The United States uses 2 times as much energy per dollar of GNP as Japan and West Germany.

Increasing auto fuel efficiency standards for new cars to 40 mpg by 2000 would save 2.8 million barrels of oil a day-more than ten times the daily amount of oil the Coastal Plain could produce, if oil is found there.

Recent polls show a majority of Americans- 86%-want a national energy policy, and would support measures to reduce our oil dependency.

Annual per capita production of trash in the U.S. is one ton.

New York City has only one remaining landfill, Fresh Kills in Staten Island - the largest of its kind in the world - where all its municipal waste is dumped.

Between 43% and 77% of an office facility's waste is composed of recyclable paper products.

On wind farms, wind turbines occupy only about 5% of the land, leaving the rest available for other uses such as farming. Our earth's interior - like the sun - provides heat energy from nature. This heat - geothermal energy - yields warmth and power that we can use without polluting the environment.

Geothermal heat originates from Earth's fiery consolidation of dust and gas over 4 billion years ago. At earth's core - 4,000 miles deep - temperatures may reach over 9,000 degrees F.

A five minute shower uses 25 gallons of water.

On average, 5 gallons of water is used each time a conventional toilet is flushed.

50% of water may be lost to evaporation when a lawn is watered in full sun.

Normal dishwasher loads require at least 15 gallons of water.

Washing machines use on average about 40 gallons of water per full cycle.

On average, a family of four uses approximately 400 gallons of water per day.

100% of Long Island's drinking water supply comes from aquifers, or water bearing rocks, beneath the surface of the ground. Rain is the only source of recharge for these aquifers.

Genetically engineered crops cover an estimated 1/4 of all cropland in the United States: about half of all the soybeans and cotton grown, and a third of all corn. Most genetically engineered plants are created to produce their own pesticide or survive weed killers.

More birds in NYS die each year from the effects of lawn pesticides than from the effects of West Nile Virus, according to the NYSDEC Wildlife Pathologist.

In home usage alone, each American uses the energy equivalent of 22 barrels
of oil a year-two and a half times the amount the Japanese use.

Each recycled aluminum can saves the energy equivalent of half a gallon of gas.

Total world energy use has risen four times since the Second World War. Doctors attribute 50,000 American deaths per year to airborne particulate matter, about one-third of which comes from power plants.

Solar Energy

Solar energy comes in many forms. Photovoltaics (PV) convert sunlight directly to electricity and are now being used to power everything from roadside phones to suburban homes. Solar energy is also used to heat pools and to produce hot water, saving consumers millions of dollars annually. Large scale solar power plants now generate enough clean electricity to power thousands of homes day and night, rain or shine.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a typical homeowner relying on electricity to heat water could save up to $500 in the first year of operation by installing a solar water heating system!

Solar collectors covering less than half of Nevada could supply all of the United States' energy needs.

Biomass Energy

About 13% of the world's primary energy comes from biomass This is equivalent to 25 million barrels of oil per day.

In 1999, about 44 percent of all renewable energy consumed in the United States came from biomass.

Biomass is organic material which has stored sunlight in the form of chemical energy. Biomass fuels include wood, wood waste, straw, manure, sugar cane, and many other byproducts from a variety of agricultural processes.

Recycling and Conservation

The styrofoam cups Americans use each year could encircle the earth 436 times.

Every Sunday more than 500,000 trees are used to produce 88% of newspapers, which never get recycled.

American consumers and industry throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet every three months.

21 million four-pound recyclable laser printer toner cartridges are thrown away every year in the U.S., adding up to 42,000 tons of plastic added to our landfills.

Paper made from paper instead of virgin wood pulp requires 70% less energy.

Every four tons of recycled paper saves the amount of energy used to heat the average-sized home in New York for one year.

Almost a billion trees are used each year to make paper. To ensure the conservation of our woodlands, we must make every effort to continue recycling.

For every one ton of paper recycled, 17 average-sized trees are saved.

Since New York's Returnable Container Law (a.k.a. "The Bottle Bill") went into effect in 1983:

More than 75 billion bottles and cans bearing a refundable 5-cent deposit have been returned and recycled in New York.'

More than 5.2 million tons of plastic, glass and aluminum containers have been diverted from the waste stream,2 saving tax-payers an estimated $300 million in disposal fees.

Recycling these materials, instead of trashing them, has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tons, and saved the energy equivalent of 25 million barrels of oil, enough energy to provide electricity to New York
City for a year!

Litter and broken glass has been reduced by 30% in our parks, playgrounds and roadsides. A Boston hospital found that emergency room visits from children injured by broken glass dropped by 60% after Massachusetts passed its bottle bill.

Approximately 5000 new jobs were created in 1983 to handle bottles and cans returned through the Bottle Bill.

Why New York Needs a Bigger, Better Bottle Bill:

Expanding the Bottle Bill to include non-carbonated beverage containers would divert up to 2.5 billion more bottles and cans from the waste stream each year.

While non-carbonated beverages make up 22% of the beverages sold in New York, they account for 62% of the bottles and cans littering our parks, roadsides, and shorelines.

More than 85% of the additional beverage containers collected through an expanded Bottle Bill are made of glass or plastic, which are costly for local governments to recycle.

Recycling these materials would save the energy equivalent of 328,000 barrels of crude oil annually, and avoid 60,000 tons a year of greenhouse gas emissions.

New York could generate an estimated $172 million a year in new revenue from unclaimed deposits to fund recycling programs and other environmental needs.

Why Do We Need To Conserve Energy

Fossil fuels are a dwindling supply of natural resources. As they become scarcer, and demand increases, they become more expensive. In the future, the cost of energy production will only skyrocket.

We pay for the same energy 4 times over, as a ratepayer, as tax subsidies for the industry, in health costs and cleanup for the environment.

To search for more oil we have to destroy once pristine areas.

The process of searching for oil destroys habitat and threatens wildlife.

Oil spills kill marine life and threaten our food supply. The North Slope of Alaska has on average 400 spills per year!

The more fossil fuels we burn, the more air pollution and health problems we endure. Over 17 million people in the U.S. suffer from asthma, a 98% increase from 1979. It's the 3rd leading cause of hospitalization for kids under 15.

Conservation and efficiency save us money immediately. Drilling takes 10 years to get oil to the pumps.