Watch your step.

April 22 is Earth Day. From last month’s EarthHour to this month’s Earth Day, there seems to be a lot of events on the environment. I get HBO, and even they are advertising about Earth Day. From what I saw, they’re going to be showing the “11th Hour“, a 2007 movie about looking at the state of the global environment and practical solutions for restoring the planet’s ecosystems (narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio). But sometimes I wonder if it’s all just talk… check out the above photo taken during EarthHour in Singapore – it doesn’t look like the construction company is turning off the lights, even for one hour.

I came across this article on scrap recycling and it provides some interesting statistics. Even though its mainly from US numbers, it gives an interesting insight into how important recycling is in society and what “if” we didn’t recycle anything…

• 106,000 aluminum cans are thrown in the garbage every 30 seconds. Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to power a television set for three hours. Recycling aluminum uses 96 percent less energy than it takes to produce the same amount of aluminum from raw materials.
• Two million plastic bottles are dumped every 5 minutes. Recycling a single plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for six hours. You can make an adult-sized fleece jacket from 25 plastic soda bottles.
• Recycling one automobile saves the energy equivalent of 502 gallons of gasoline and reduces the greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 8,811 lbs.
• Recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees, 79 gallons of oil, 7000 gallons of water, and 3.3 cubic yards of landfill.