KeepGreenGoing

The United States is the world’s top consumer nation. Americans spend about four times more per person than any other country. And let’s face it - we do it largely by shopping. On average, every American shops everyday for about 24 minutes. Per year, we spend somewhere around $4 trillion. That’s a lot of money. And think about this… A new car is made every second, 2.3 million shoes are purchased every day and 2. 6 billion toys are bought every year. Through marketing and advertising (I should know, I work at an advertising agency) the psychology of shopping is embedded deep into our brains. The real question I always wonder - where does all that stuff go?

Each of us produces about 4.54 pounds of trash every day through our consumption and disposal habits. This amounts to 1657 pounds per person per year. That’s a lot of disposal. Also consider that every month 100,000 CDs are tossed and 50 million pounds of toothbrushes are scattered throughout the country’s landfills every year. It can easily be said that we’re a disposable society - we use tons of materials, water and energy to make the things we buy - only to discard of them later.

With over 6.6 billion people on this earth doing lots of buying, shopping poses a real threat. So where does all “this stuff” come from? It’s manufactured. The manufacturing industry alone sucks 1/3 of the energy and 13 percent of the water supply in the United States. With all this in mind, here are three simple steps from “The Green Book” to keep green going when shopping:

1. Minimal Packaging

If just 1 out of 10 products you bought had little or no packaging, it would eliminate more than 50 pounds of waste per household per year. This small reduction could also save you at least $30 annually, as $1 of every $11 you spend at the supermarket pays for the packaging of the products you buy. If every household did this, 5.5 billion fewer pounds of waste would enter landfills. This is enough garbage to cover all of New York City’s Central Park to a depth of 27 feet.

2. Go Paper

While both paper and plastic are not ideal choices at the checkout - baggers usually fill paper bags with more items than they do plastic bags. Also, paper bags can be easily reused. Moreover, paper bags have a better chance to being recycled.

3. Better Bathroom Tissue

If every household replaced just a single twelve-roll pack of regular bathroom tissue with a recycled variety, it would save almost 5 million trees and enough paper waste to fill 17,000 garbage trucks.