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Eco-Tip for July July 15th, 2011
Switch out your curtains. White curtains in summer reflect heat. In the winter, dark heavy curtains help warm rooms and let you lower your thermostat. For each degree you adjust your thermostat, you save 3-5% on your energy bill and reduce carbon emissions too.
Eco-Tips for the Holidays December 10th, 2010
We have a new Eco-Tips page on this site. Updated weekly, it has suggestions on how to make our everyday lives more environmentally sustainable – and fun! Please visit the Eco-Tips page in English and in Spanish.
Our thanks for these weekly posts go out to a committed parishioner in the Oblate parish of Mary Immaculate in Pacoima, California! These weekly tips are printed in the Sunday bulletin in that parish. Feel free to use them for your church.
Consider giving experiences rather than things:
As we enter the holiday season, consumers flock to malls, department stores and outlets in droves to search for that perfect gift, that one card that says it all, that tree to end all trees. But as we feast, give gifts, decorate and travel, we also consume lots of resources and generate lots of waste. A recent report noted that the amount of household garbage in the United States generally increases by 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, from 4 million tons to 5 million tons.
Think about what you can do to stop the impact of the holidays on earth. The people we love will most enjoy spending time with us; think about how you could do this instead of buying more things.