WASTED is a 30 minute show on the Planet Green Channel. The host (Annabelle Guriwitch
and Holter Graham), go into peoples homes and teach them how to cut down on their
waste thereby lowering their ecological footprint.
They developed an internationally recognized, ecological footprint calculator that
measures factors like waste, energy and fuel consumption and translates that data into
land size.
For example, in the episode I watched, a couple in an 1300 sq. ft. apartment in New
York City, calculated like this. Their living space is 0.03 acres, which should be
their footprint. However, their eco-footprint = 49.8 acres, 1600 times the size of
their property.
They go back after 3 weeks to see how well they are doing. This couple managed to
reduce their footprint 35% to 32.6 acres, not perfect but they are getting there.
The show is chocked full of helpful tips and interesting tidbits.
– Throwing a glass bottle in a landfill, instead of recycling and it will
sit there for 1 million years.
– Organic (food) waste in a landfill makes methane gas which is 23 times
worse for the environment in terms of climate change, than CO2. They
advocated worms, I say go with the trash composter.
– In an average year, a typical coal burning power plant spews out 4 million
tons of earth choking CO2 into the atmosphere.
– By taking Public Transportation, Americans are saving 45 million barrels
of oil a year. That’s enough fuel annually to power a quarter of all the homes in the U.S.
– Apparently there are eco-friendly dry cleaners which use natural chemicals
as opposed to the traditional dry cleaning chemicals which have been linked
to an increase in cancer and is also really bad for the environment.
Search for one near you. Also, the dry cleaning industry uses at least
3.5 billion wire hangers every year and that equates to the amount of
steel used to build 60,000 automobiles. So, take those hangers back to
the dry cleaners, people!
The Planet Green channel has certainly been doing their homework!