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JAMer's go GREEN!! How green are you?
From the June 2008 Messenger

Simple tips to green your kitchen

You can save energy and water by simply using them more efficiently. We shouldn't have to make large sacrifices to conserve, accomplishing less with less. While there's a lot to be said for installing efficient lighting, changing out old appliances for Energy Star models, replacing drafty windows, or re-fitting your sinks with low-flow fixtures (which will pay for themselves over time), what about when you don't have any money to invest? Fortunately, you can still cut your energy and water consumption by spending nothing at all. That's because a lot of your energy and water use depends on how you use what you already have in your house. Using your current appliances more efficiently, in other words, can lower your consumption and your utility bills. If you're looking to save energy, water, and money this spring, a good place to start is your kitchen. By some estimates, kitchen appliances account for 26 percent of an average household's electricity use. And dish washing is one of the more water-intensive activities in your home. Here's a list of easy habits you can adopt to use your kitchen appliances more efficiently:

Oven *Don't open the oven door to check on a dish — use the oven light instead (20 percent of the heat can be lost each time you open the oven door). *Keep preheating to a minimum. *Turn the oven off before cooking is complete (depending on the dish, up to 15 minutes). The heat in the oven will continue to cook the dish until finished. *If you need to self-clean the oven, plan to do it after cooking a meal while the oven is already hot, requiring less energy to raise the temperature to a higher level.

Stove top *Match the pan size to the element size. *Use the least amount of water and the smallest size pan possible. Otherwise you're wasting energy to heat up excess metal or excess water.

Refrigerator *Let hot foods cool to room temperature before putting them in the fridge. Otherwise the fridge works even harder to bring the temperature down. *Keep the freezer full. The more air you displace with food and beverages, the less cold air you lose when you open the freezer door.

Dishwasher *Run the dishwasher when full; it requires the same amount of energy for a full load as it does for a half load. *Use the "no heat" drying option. *Don't wash dishes twice. Although it depends upon the age of your dishwasher, most dishwashers can get your dishes clean without rinsing them first by hand.

Other appliances *Plug counter top appliances into a power strip that can be turned off after use, saving the energy that would be used by the appliances when in "standby mode." (Depending upon how often you use your microwave, the microwave's digital clock could use more energy than the microwave oven itself.) *You can also simply unplug appliances when you're done using them. *And paper where do we put the paper? In that big beautiful GREEN and yellow bin in the FCCC parking lot. Rules for the paper bin….No Phonebooks or cardboard. We want your magazines, shopping catalogs, school or office papers, shredded paper (in a garbage bag with holes punched in the bag), sales papers. Please DO NOT include: plastic, glass, metal, or trash.

That's it for this month…next month…Ten Ways to be Green! Let's all take a part in saving God's gift to us.

Patty

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From The August 2008 Messenger:

JAMer's go GREEN!!
We know you're swamped for time. Between school, church, family obligations and your social life, who has time to spare?
Believe it or not, there's a lot you can do even if a minute is all you have.

Here's some things you may not have known about recycling that may just make you get up and DO SOMETHING!

Fact 1

The average American used 650 pounds of paper each year. 100 MILLION TONS of wood could be saved each year if all that paper was actually recycled.

Fact 2

About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is only 28%.

Fact 3

Americans use 2.5 MILLION plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away ...

Fact 4

Every month Americans throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper (think: Empire State Building). All these jars are recyclable!

Fact 5

Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures a year! Ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
? It's twice the size of Texas and is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. It's also 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons.

Fact 6

Recycling one ton (about 2,000 pounds) of paper saves 17 trees, 2 barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 mile), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for six months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of pollution.

Fact 7

The 17 trees saved by recycling a ton of paper can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year.

Fact 8

If all our newspapers were recycled, we could save about 250 MILLION trees each year! If every American recycled just one-tenth (that's one out of ten) of their newspapers, we could save about 25 MILLION trees a year.

Fact 9

More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. Believe it not, ALL that foil is recyclable, but not may people realize it so most it goes in the trash!

Fact 10

Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours - or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline. In spite of this, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every three months!

Fact 11

A typical family consumes 182 gallons of pop (aka soda), 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallosn of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers - make sure they're recycled!
Next month…What can you do?
Go Green...
Patty

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Helpful & Fun Recycling Web Sites!

http://www.silkgreencaps.com/