Tips On What You Can Do To Help Protect Ozone Layer

The ozone layer in the Earth's atmosphere protects us from the harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun, but it is at risk of depletion. This article explains the problem, what is causing it, the international and local efforts to reduce the production and use of ozone depleting chemicals, and how you can help to protect the ozone layer.

Ozone Layer Depletion
The ozone layer is a shield of ozone gas in the stratosphere, between 15 and 35 km above the Earth's surface. The result of a reaction between ultraviolet light from the Sun and oxygen molecules, it stops most ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching us. However, in 1975 scientists detected a severe drop in ozone levels over Antarctica that repeated each Spring, and by 1987 half of the ozone over the continent had disappeared, creating an enormous "hole" twice the size of the United States. This "hole" in the ozone layer threatens the Earth's environmental balance and human health, with increased cases of skin cancer, eye cataracts and damage to the immune system.

Cases of Ozone Layer Depletion
The stratosphere is being depleted of ozone by man-made chemicals including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons, methyl chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, methyl bromide, hydrobromofluorocarbons (HBFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). These chemicals are commonly used as cooling agents for refrigerators and air-conditioners, propellants for aerosol sprays, blowing agents in the manufacture of foam and some plastics, fire retardants for extinguishers and in cleaning agents and solvents in industries. In other words, they are widely used in our everyday lives.

What You Can Do?

Although most ozone depleting substances are used in industry and commerce, what you do at home can still make a difference. The most effective way of protecting the ozone layer is to reduce or even stop using ozone depleting chemicals. You can do this by:

• buying air-conditioners that do not use HCFCs or CFCs as refrigerants;
• regularly inspecting and maintaining your air-conditioners and refrigeration appliances to minimise refrigerant leaks;
• recovering and recycling HCFCs and CFCs in air-conditioners and refrigeration appliances when they are serviced; replacing and retrofitting such equipment to operate on non-HCFC and non-CFC refrigerant should also be considered.
  

Overall, the best way to help protect the ozone layer is to stop buying all products, big and small, that contain ozone depleting substances. Together we can make a difference.

HELP SAVE MOTHER EARTH!

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9 Easy Tips To Save Mother Earth

Here are a few tips from David de Rothschild that can help people save money as well as be environmentally friendly:

Replace a Lightbulb
If one million homes replaced four of their traditional incandescent bulbs with Energy-Star approved compact fluorescent bulbs (the ones that look like soft-serve ice cream cones), 900,000 tons of greenhouse gasses would be eliminated, and people would save approximately $30 to $50 dollars in electricity over the life of the bulb for each bulb they replace.

Kill Phantom Power
Even when most household appliances are turned off, their standby modes continue to suck power that wastes electricity and increases your electric bill. The worst offenders are cell phone chargers, where only 5% of the power they draw is used to charge your phone, while the other 95% is wasted when left plugged in. What to do? Unplug your cell phone charger when you aren't using it, and plug all of your big appliances (especially TV's and home entertainment equipment) into an easy-to-reach power strip that you can turn off when you aren't using them.

TV's and VCR's in standby mode waste an estimated $1 billion dollars in electricity each year, but if one million households halved their phantom power load, we'd eliminate 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Put On a Sweater
By lowering your thermostat by just 2 degrees in the winter, you'll save up to 4% on your energy bill, and prevent 500 lbs. of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. Plus, as David writes, the more people who wear sweaters, the happier Jimmy Carter will be.

Paper or Plastic? Neither!
We've long been told to ask for paper instead of plastic bags at the grocery store, but the truth is, although paper bags are biodegradable, the waste of resources used to produce them makes paper almost as big a drain on the environment as plastic bags are. What to do? While paper is still preferable to plastic, the best option is to bring your own reusable bags to the grocery store, be they canvas or nylon or hemp, and skip paper or plastic altogether.

Lobby Your Hotel
In a given year, a single hotel room uses more than 80,000 gallons of water and generates 5 tons of garbage. Given that there are approximately 3.3 million hotel rooms in the U.S., hotels generate a lot of waste, and that's not even counting the near-continual use of air conditioning in every room. How do we do our part? Many hotels now offer guests the option to use one set of linens and towels during their stay. If one million people used just one set of linens for a week, it would save 1.5 million gallons of water.

Build a Straw Home
Building a home using straw insulation instead of traditional building materials will cut heating and cooling costs, reducing your energy usage by two-thirds. If one million households halved their gas-heating bill, 2.75 million tons of carbon dioxide would be eliminated per year.

Harvest the Sun
If one million homes installed solar panels on their roof and switched to solar power, we could reduce C02 emissions by 4.3 million tons a year. Currently, it is an expensive investment, costing over $20,000 to install solar panels on the roof of your home. However, homeowners can save potentially hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year in electricity costs; most people will still be connected to the power grid, and will simply use the traditional electricity as auxiliary power.

Install a Windmill
If 100,000 homes installed and relied on wind power, C02 production could be reduced by 900,000 tons. The cost of installing a wind turbine starts at $7,000, and an average wind speed of 10mph is required to generate an adequate amount of power.

Drive a Frybrid
For between $500 and $1000, you can convert the engine your old Mercedes diesel sedan to run on used french-fry grease (aka vegetable oil). According to David, more than one million gallons of fuel could be made from waste vegetable oil collected from restaurants in San Francisco alone.

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