We are Earth Matters & this is our mission:
To inspire, educate, & network with neighboring congregations & community organizations to respectfully & responsibly care for God’s Gift of Creation.
“Probably the question I am asked more often than any other is: Do you honestly believe there is hope for our world? For the future of our children and grandchildren? And I am able to answer truthfully, yes. I believe we still have a window of time during which we can start healing the harm we have inflicted on the planet—but the window is closing. I believe that every one of us can make a difference.”
-Jane Goodall
Did you know???
around 27,000 trees are cut down each day? There are 3.04 trillion trees in the world. However, 27,ooo trees are cut down daily to make toilet paper. This translates to about 9.8 million trees annually.
on average, one supermarket goes through 60 million paper bags each year?
one single recycled edition of the New York Times could save 75,000 trees?
paper from trees can be recycled six times?
there is a giant floating patch of garbage called “The great Pacific Garbage Patch”, a twisting and turning vortex composed of trash and waste? It is twice the size of continental America and contains about 100 million tons of garbage. It stretches from the west coast of North America to Japan along the Pacific Ocean.
that about 34% of dead leatherback turtles have ingested plastic?
that 78% of marine mammals are at risk of choking on plastic? Plastic bags and other plastic garbage that ends up in the oceans kill over 1,000,000 sea animals every year.
that it takes about 1,000 years for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill? There were 1.9 million grocery bags and other plastic bags collected in the 2018 International Coastal Cleanup.
that cardboard takes two months to breakdown, plastic milk jugs take five years, juice pouches and plastic water bottles more than 400 years, glass takes 1,000,000 years and styrofoam never!
Renew - almost 2/3 of household waste can be composted. Reduce your footprint by starting a backyard compost pile or worm bin. Repair - anything that is fixable instead of throwing it away and buying new.
that Americans use an average of 365 plastic bags per person per year? People in Denmark use an average of four plastic bags per year.
that every three months, Americans throw enough aluminum in the landfills to build our nation’s entire commercial air fleet?
Americans throw away 25 TRILLION Styrofoam cups every year? Styrofoam is not biodegradable.
• recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to power a normal light bulb for about four hours?
a glass bottle can take up to 1 million years to decompose?
• if you walk a mile along an average US highway, you will see, on average, about 1,457 pieces of litter