Energy Facts

• A good old-fashioned clothesline is still the most energy efficient way to dry clothes.
• Did you know every day of school the District busses drive the equivalent in mileage of Once Around The World, and they do this every school day!  How many miles do they drive in one school year?
• If we all recycled all our Sunday papers, 500,000 trees could be saved each week.
• More than two-thirds of the oil consumed in the U.S. is used for transportation, mostly cars and light trucks.
• The electric bill for running 1,000 personal computers for one year would amount to how much?  -  $115,000.00.  APS has about 38,000 computers.
• In the United States, 1,500 aluminum cans are recycled every second.  In 2006 Americans used 95 billion aluminum cans.
• Did you know there is a light bulb that uses less than one third of the energy of a conventional bulb and lasts 10 times longer; do you know what it is?   Compact Fluorescent Bulb or CFBs.
• Power Plant - a building that houses machines that convert natural resources, such as oil or coal, into electricity. Coal or oil is burned to create heat that produces steam from water. The steam turns large generators that produce electricity.
• Since 1990, recycling has increased by more than 200 percent creating a surge in the production of recycled fabrics.
• Computer monitors waste over $900 million in electricity per year because: 1. 60 % of all computers and monitors are left on at night!, 2. 40% of all monitors are not enabled for power management!, 3. This electricity wasted is equivalent to 9 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year or the emissions of 1.5 million automobiles!
• If we changed one incandescent bulb with a CFB light bulb for every child in America we would prevent over 30 Billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions and save enough energy to light more than 15 million homes for an entire year.
• Of all the fresh water on earth, 99.5% is in icecaps and glaciers.
• Over 90% of all the energy we use in the United States comes from non-renewable resources like: Coal Oil Nuclear Fission.
• The world uses 175 million barrels of oil each day or 85,000 gallons of gas each second of each day.  Based on these numbers the United States used 21,250 gallons of gas each second of each day.
• APS spends more money on energy bills than it does on educational material.
• If we all recycled all our Sunday papers, 500,000 trees could be saved each week.
• New Mexico is the 5th largest state producing oil and gas in the United States.
• Recycling 1 aluminum can saves enough energy to power a computer for 3 hours.
• Americans buy over a billion incandescent light bulbs every year.  That's equal to 3 acres of bulbs a day.
• Of the natural gas used in the home, 65% is for heating.
• The 71 million computers and monitors in America use more electricity than all other forms of office equipment combined.
• Currently, the nation's 17,000 K-12 schools spend more than $5 billion annually on energy.
• The junk mail Americans receive in one day could produce enough energy to heat over 235,000 homes.
• More than 20,000,000 Hersheys Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tin foil.  All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it!
• Recycle newspapers. Paper made from recycled paper uses about one-third less energy than paper made from raw materials.
• An open fireplace damper can let 8% of your heat escape through the chimney.
• The dishwasher uses 80% of its energy just to heat the water.
• Compact florescent light bulbs saves money on energy costs using 75% less energy and labor costs, they can pay for themselves in less than a year.
• Kilowatt-Hour - The amount of power (kilowatts) used in one hour (kWh).
• If every household in the U.S. changed one 100 watt incandescent light bulb to a 23 watt CFB, the U.S. would power 15 million homes in the U.S. for 1 year.
• A ¼ inch crack under your front door will waste as much energy as a 2 X 2 hole in your wall.
• The world population used 70 million gallons of oil each day.  Of those 70 million gallons a day the United States used 20 million gallons of oil each day of the year.
• The electricity generated by power plants is distributed through high power transmission lines all the way to your school or house.
• Styrofoam IS NOT recyclable-you cannot make it into new Styrofoam.  Each year Americans throws away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam cups.  Even 500 years from now, the Styrofoam cup you used today will be still in the landfill.
• Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour of every day and most of them are thrown away.
• About one-third of the average dump is made up of packing materials.
• In the life of one 100 watt incandescent light bulb, over 400 pounds of coal must be burned to make enough electricity.
• Natural gas is used to heat over half the homes in the United States.
• One-third of the water used in most homes is flushed down the toilet.
• DOE estimates that 25% to 30% of all the energy used in public schools across America is wasted.  For APS that is equal to $3.4 million dollars.
• One cow produces enough methane gas in a 24 hour period to provide the power the average car 38 miles.
• If we all installed low-flow shower heads nation wide, we could save billions of gallons of water every year.
• A typical family in the U.S consumes 182 gallons of pop, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk and 26 gallons of bottles water a year.  That's a lot of containers - - make sure they are recycled.
• In the U.S., the cost of using computers and related equipment is what percentage of the average electric bill?  -  15%
• In 20 years the US demand for energy will increase by 85%.
• Electricity as an energy resource is the only resource that can not be stored or saved like COAL OIL WATER NUCLEAR.  But we expect it to be there at the flip of a switch.  Electricity must be produced and used instantaneously!
• 2 gallons of tap water is needed to make 1 gallon of bottled water.
• Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
• By recycling 1 ton of paper we save:  17 trees 6,953 gallons of water 463 gallons of oil 587 pounds of air pollution 3.06 cubic yards of landfill space and 4,077 kilowatt hours of energy.
• Every hour, Americans throw about 2.5 million plastic bottles in the trash.
• Electrical energy used to power lights, computers, TV's, etc., is generated by power plants. Most of these power plants use coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear fuel to run them.
• As much as 33% of our electric energy is used for lights or about $2,000,000.00.
• It takes 16 times more energy to make aluminum can from raw materials than it does from a recycled aluminum can.
• If everyone in the United States changed out just one light to one that is a CFB we would save enough energy to light 7 million homes and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1 million cars.
• Did you know there is a light bulb that uses less than one third of the energy of a conventional bulb and lasts 10 times longer; do you know what it is?   Compact Fluorescent Bulb or CFBs.
• Regular faucets use 3 to 7 gallons per minute of water, assuming 20 minutes of faucet usage per day thats 60 to 140 gallons of water each day or 1,800 to 4,200 gallons each month for each household.  Low flow faucet can cut that usage in half!
• If all the teachers in APS would turn their lights off for lunch and prep the district would save over $220,000 each year in electricity.
• The world is not running out of oil and gas, we are running out of affordable oil and gas.
• It takes an entire forest over 500,000 trees to supply Americans with their Sunday newspaper every week.