WATER: Do's and Don'ts Around the Home What you don't know can hurt the environment. When rain falls or snow melts, the seemingly negligible amounts of chemicals and other pollutants around your home and premises get picked up and carried via storm drains to surface waters. The ramifications include polluted drinking water, beach closings, and endangered wildlife.

Oceans and Fisheries:

Each year, commercial fishing worldwide wastes more than 16 billion pounds of fish and kills hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, marine mammals and seabirds.

Each year commercial fishing operations catch and kill more than 300,000 marine mammals worldwide – more than 800 each day.

Cruise ships generate an astonishing amount of pollution, up to 25,000 gallons of sewage from toilets and 143,000 gallons of sewage from sinks, galleys and showers each day. Currently, lax state and federal laws allow cruise ships to dump untreated sewage from toilets once the ship is three miles from shore.

Sea turtles have been swimming the world's oceans since before the dinosaurs roamed the earth, more than 110 million years ago. However, these treasures of ancient times are now on the brink of extinction. All six sea turtles species found in U.S. waters are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

Transportation By The Numbers

Transportation facts underscore the need for reformTransportation is one of the biggest causes of global warming pollution in the U.S. Our inefficient use of roadways and public transportation are only part of the problem.Check out our list of startling facts and figures.

Take Action to Support Transportation Solutions

You can earn "transformation points" for your state while helping decrease your pollution and carbon emissions by taking our Transportation Solutions and Personal Action Pledges, and telling your friends.

Energy Watch:

Using energy more efficiently and moving to renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal, and bioenergy) would significantly reduce our emissions of heat-trapping gases.

The United States currently produces 70 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil, but only two percent from renewable sources. Since the burning of fossil fuels releases large amounts of carbon dioxide—the leading cause of global warming—but renewable energy does not, increasing the share of our electricity generated from renewable resources is one of the most effective ways to reduce global warming emissions.

Cars and trucks are another significant source (25 percent) of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. A serious effort to address global warming must therefore reduce emissions from cars and trucks. Many technologies already exist that can do this, while also creating new jobs in the U.S. automotive sector and other industries throughout the country. In addition, American consumers would save billions of dollars on gasoline, and we would reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

By putting energy efficiency, renewable energy, and vehicle technology solutions in place at the federal level, we can reduce our contribution to global warming while creating a stronger, healthier, and more secure nation.

Waste management

Outdoor-gear label Patagonia is collecting used clothing (regardless of brand) made from Polartec and Capilene to melt and make into new fabric and clothes. (Some of that fleece is especially virtuous, starting out as fabric made from recycled plastic.) The company estimates that making polyester fiber out of recycled garments, compared with using new polyester, will result in a 76% energy savings and reduce greenhouse gases 71%. To shear your own fleece, visit patagonia.com/recycle.

Buying a shirt the second time around means you avoid consuming all the energy used in producing and shipping a new one and, therefore, the carbon emissions associated with it. Every item of clothing you own has an impact on the environment. Some synthetic textiles are made with petroleum products. Cotton accounts for less than 3% of farmed land globally but consumes about a quarter of the pesticides.

If every U.S. home viewed and paid its bills online, the switch would cut solid waste by 1.6 billion tons a year and curb greenhouse-gas emissions by 2.1 million tons a year, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.

Every year, more than 500 billion plastic bags are distributed, and less than 3% of those bags are recycled. They are typically made of polyethylene and can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade in landfills that emit harmful greenhouse gases. Reducing your contribution to plastic-bag pollution is as simple as using a cloth bag (or one made of biodegradable plant-based materials) instead of wasting plastic ones. For your next trip to the grocery store, BYOB.

Deforestation

An acre of forest is cut every second world wide.

Every continent is being deforested except for Antarctica.

In Europe the forest were cut back so long ago that scientists that look at paintings to see what kind of trees grew there. Only 1/5 of the world's frontier forests remain intact.

As a result of deforestation and poor forest management, about ten percent of the world's 80-100,000 tree species are in danger of extinction.