Some Good Stuff

In a time when we are being bombarded with information about all the terrible things happening in our world, it's refreshing to see the positive changes being made. People all over the planet are taking steps to reduce our impact, change our habits, and eliminate older, less efficient technologies. For me, it's more motivating to see progress, and get motivation through other people's actions. Here are a few examples of progress from "How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint":

** In Australia the sale of incandescent lightbulbs will be banned in 2010. California is planning to phase them out by 2012.

** Refillable plastic bottles are common in Scandinavia- you put your used bottles into a reverse vending machine and get your deposit back.

** Thanks to water saving publicity campaigns, water use in Finland has gone down by 40% in the last 20 years.

** Composting organic waste from the home saves approximately 30% of our trash from going to the landfill.

** Between 1994 and 2006, the value of U.S. agricultural products directly sold from farm to customer increased 37% from $592 million to $812 million.

** Organic farms have been found to contain 85% more plant species, 33% more bats, 17% more spiders and 5% more birds than nonorganic ones.

** A tax on plastic shopping bags in the Republic of Ireland has cut their use by more than 90%.