Did you know?

If 25 percent of U.S. households used 10 fewer plastic bags a month, we would save more than 2.5 billion bags a year.

So: after you go grocery shopping, save those bags and use them next time you go.

More than 200 million gallons of gasoline are used every day in the U.S.

So: leave your car at your apartment or house and bike in. If you don’t have a bike, jump on one of CyRide’s Cybrid buses.

Americans throw away enough glass in a month to fill an entire sky scraper.

So: take your glass bottles to the Ames Resource Recovery Plant. They accept glass items for free.

About half of all rainforests are already gone.

So: email assignments to professors and don’t print off all of your syllabi. Recycle your newspapers and try to use a notebook for more than just one class.

A giant “island” of trash floats near Hawaii where few people travel. The island is called Great Pacific Garbage Patch and is made up of mostly plastic items broken down to their smallest form. This patch is estimated to be twice the size of Texas.

So: recycle your plastic items so they don’t end up in the oceans.