Biblical Basis

Proverbs 13:22a
A good person leaves an inheritance for their children's children. 

Luke 12:15
Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. 

Psalm 96:12-13
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord.

Impacts of Consumer Society

• If all the world's people lived like today's North Americans, it would take two additional planet Earths' to produce enough resources and to absorb the wastes. ¹
   
  
• Each American produces about 4.3 pounds of trash every day. The total waste generated by Americans every day fills 63,000 garbage trucks. ²
   
  
• Reducing waste and recycling saves energy and slows global warming, it also reduces water pollution, acid rain and the soil erosion caused by logging. ³
   
  

Support Buy Nothing Day

The day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year. Do your part to reduce consumption! Support "Buy Nothing Day" -- a 24-hour moratorium on consumer spending. ⁸

Paper

• It takes an entire forest (over 550,000 trees) to supply Americans with one Sunday's newspapers. ⁴
• Nearly 750,000 photocopies a minute were made in the US in 1991. ⁵
• By 2010, world paper and paperboard consumption is expected to increase 90% from 1993, to 528 million tons. ⁶
• Every ton of high quality recycled paper saves 17 trees. It also saves 7,000 gallons of water and 60 pounds of air pollution. ⁷

Metal

• Every three months, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial airfleet. ⁹
• If we recycled one-tenth of the cans we now throw away, we'd save about 3.2 billion cans a year. ¹⁰
• You can make 20 recycled aluminum vans with the energy it takes to make one new can. ¹¹
• A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces it's air and water pollution and mining wastes by about 70%. ¹²

Glass

• In 1960, 54% of beer in the US was sold in refillable bottles; by 1990 the figure had decreased to only about 75%. ¹³
• A ton of glass from raw materials creates 384 pounds of mining waste, and uses one ton of other resources, including sand, soda ash, and limestone. ¹⁴
• The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle will light a 100-watt bulb for four hours. ¹⁵

Plastic

• Five recycled soft drink bottles make enough fiberfill for a ski jacket. 36 bottles can make one square yard of carpet. ¹⁶
• Americans go through 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. ¹⁷
• The plastics industry uses five of the top six chemicals on the EPA's list of chemicals that generate the most hazardous waste during production. ¹⁸

REFUSE & TAKE CONTROL

• Just say No! to packaging. One out of every $10 spent at the store is for packaging. ¹⁹
• Bring your own bags or backpack, and carry a mug.
• Ask for paper made from kenaf, straw or other "tree-free" materials.
• Encourage friends to spend time volunteering instead of shopping.
• Stop junk mail! Write the Direct Marketing Association Mail Preference Service, Box 9008, Farmingdale, NY 11735. Ask that your address not be given to direct marketers.
• Observe your purchases for a week. What do you buy that you could make, borrow, or do without? Save money and donate it to charity.

REUSE & RECYCLE

• Cut your paper in half: always use both sides.
• Before throwing things away, check for thrift shops and consignment shops that could use them.
• Recycle everything your community takes. Avoid products or packaging that can't be recycled.
• Check the National Green Pages or Choose to Reusefor where to send those hard-to-recycle materials.
• Compost! Turn food waste into soil. It's easy to do at home, or help your cafeteria learn to compost.

BUY RECYCLED

• Buy second-hand products when you can.
• Always look for paper products that use "post-consumer" recycled materials. "Post-consumer" means it was collected from recycling programs, not scraps left over at the paper mill.
• Write major soft drink companies and ask them to support bottle bills that add a 5 cent (or more) deposit to the price of a drink. These bills are important because people are rewarded financially for recycling. ²¹
• Read the fine print! The chasing arrows symbol on a product could mean it has recycled content, or that it's recyclable. On plastic products, it identifies the type of plastic used. Depending on the number (1-7), the product may or may not be recyclable.

University Bookstores Take the Lead

• Concordia University Bookstore in Montreal offer 10% off new batteries for each battery returned to recycle.
• McNeese State Bookstore in Lake Charles, LA, offers tree-free filler paper, pads, and notebooks.
• Ned's Bookstore at Michigan State Univ. recycles all parts of used notebooks, offering 10% of new notebooks when old ones are returned.

T.E. Campus Chapters Cut Waste

• The King's keepers in Edmonton, Alberta, used a Chapter Grant to start a reusable mug program on their campus.
• The Shamar Chapter at Dordt College collects and resells textbooks to reduce waste.
• The Wheaton Earth-keepers spent two years transforming the nearly non-existent campus recycling program into a comprehensive, campus-wide system.