52 ways to tread lightly on God's Earth

     This list contains fifty-two suggestions, one for each week of the year, for being better stewards of God's Creation. Please consider implementing as many as you can. This list has been divided into four pages that can be accessed via links at the bottom of each page.

                    by Jane Easterly, Restoring Creation Enabler,
                    Presbytery of Chicago

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1. Eat more fruits, vegetables, and grains. It takes 7,500,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of beef, compared to only 250,000 to produce one ton of corn! Plus, cattle ranching contributes to deforestation. Eating more fruits, vegetables and grains is better for you as well as the environment-even lions don't at red meat three times a day!
 
2. Use less. Use less electricity, gasoline, food, water. The average U.S. citizen consumes 100 times as much of the world's resources as the average person in the world's poorest countries.
 
3. Reuse things. Every five years, the average American produces a mound of waste equal to the mass of the Statue of Liberty! Wear things out before discarding them, and if you have an item you don't need anymore, don't throw it away--give it to someone who does need it.
 
4. Recycle what can't be reused. Even if it's too much trouble to recycle your batteries and food scraps, it's easy to recycle newspaper, glass, and aluminum cans. Recycling some of your waste is much better than recycling none. More than a ton of waste per person living in the U.S. is generated every year!
 
5. Buy recycled products. It is far more efficient to make new items out of recycled material than new material. For example, it takes only 1/20 as much energy to create a new aluminum can out of recycled aluminum as it does to produce one from newly extracted ore, and it takes 60% less energy to make new paper from recycled paper than it does to manufacture paper from a newly cut tree. But if we don't buy recycled products, manufacturers will have no incentive to make them.
 
6. Walk, skate, or bike wherever you can. Avoid using your car for short trips. When you do drive, don't circle the parking lot looking for a closer space. Park in the first available space and walk. It's healthier for you as well as the environment!
 
7. Carry canvas bags in your car to use at the store. Recycling paper or plastic bags is great, but it's even better to carry reusable bags of your own. And if you purchase just one item at a store and don't need a bag to carry the item out, say so. It's okay to just say no to a bag!
 
8. Use less water. Although there seems to be a lot of water on Earth, over 97% of it is in the oceans. Of the total fresh water, over 70% is in ice, mostly the polar ice caps. The fresh water on the continents makes up less than 1% of the Earth's total water. While a human being requires about a gallon of water a day to survive, about 1,800 gallons of water are consumed per day for each person in the U.S.!
 
9. Plant things. Grow trees, plants and flowers in your yard if you have one or in pots in your home if you don't. Plants fight the greenhouse effect by removing carbon dioxide from the air.
 
10. Be nice to people. People are a part of God's creation too, and people who are treated nicely might treat others (spouses, children, pets, wildlife) more nicely.
 
11. Respect wildlife. They are willing to share the earth with us, so we need to be willing to share it with them. It is estimated that human activities drive two to eight wildlife species to extinction every hour.
 
12. Use cloth napkins instead of paper ones.
 
13. Car pool or take public transportation. The burning of gasoline by automobiles is far and away the largest producer of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere. Carbon monoxide replaces oxygen in the blood's hemoglobin in animals (including humans), reducing the ability of blood to carry oxygen to the brain and the rest of the body. If 1% of U.S. car owners didn't use their cars one day a week, 42 million gallons less gas would be burnt!

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