carbon dioxide

This past Saturday, I toured Greenpeace's 50-meter Arctic Sunrise at Penn's Landing for their Coal Free Future Tour. This month-long tour, also hitting up Wilmington, NC, NYC & Boston, is teaching the Northeast about the major impacts the coal industry has on the environment. Regardless of the campaign & political jargon, "Clean Coal" in an oxymoron. Coal is dirty by production, the single largest source of carbon dioxide pollution in the US & the largest source of mercury emissions in the country. Pollution from coal-powered plants is responsibly for 13,200 deaths per year, (Treehugger) (1359 from PA alone), 20,000 heart attacks, 217,600 asthma attacks, and more than 1.6 million lost work days per year. "Clean coal" is a technology that will cost billions to test and wouldn't be ready for decades. (Find out more about Greenpeace & the Coal Free Tour after the jump!)

Stop listening to the old wives tales: Wash your laundry in cold water. A whopping 90% of energy used for washing clothes is heating the water (Planet Green). If you select that cold/cold option for 4 out of 5 cycles, you'll save 72 LBs of carbon dioxide emissions this month alone! (It's also good for your wallet - You'll save $60-100 a year on energy bills too!)