It’s All Greek To Me

A Bit From The Green Glossary For Everyday People:

Eco-footprint – Measures how much land and water area a human requires to produce the resources he consumes and to absorb his wastes. It compares human demand with planet Earth’s ecological capacity to regenerate. Estimating how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle. Example: For 2005, humanity’s total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.3 planet Earths – in other words, humanity uses ecological services 1.3 times as fast as Earth can renew them. If you want to calculate your own eco-footprint, try this site …

http://www.conservation.org/act/live_green/Pages/ecofootprint.aspx

Going Green – Adopting practices that reduce your overall impact on the environment and making an effort to be environmentally conscious, sustainable, and knowledgeable. Consciously adapting your daily lifestyle to a routine that is healthier for yourself, your planet, and future generations. No big leaps needed, start step by little step, to curb harmful habits, to start reducing your energy usage, recycling, using public transportation, buying local products, and building, buying, or retrofitting your home that is as energy efficient and healthy as possible.

Ozone Layer and it’s Hole – A layer of the Earth’s stratosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of ozone (O3). This layer (called “good” ozone) absorbs 93-99% of the sun’s damaging high frequency ultraviolet light.The “Hole” an area about the size of the US over Antarctica discovered in 1985 which showed a marked decrease in O3. Reports of the Sun’s killer UV rays shooting through the hole like a ray gun and desindergrating people where exaggerated – mostly – no really that didn’t happen. The Recovery – Efforts to ban or reduce the chemicals that eat away at the ozone layer have initiated the gradual recovery of the hole. This recovery will take decades though because these pollutants hang around for a long time. So far the ozone hole over Antarctica has remained about the same size, fluctuating year-to-year with changes in wind circulation patterns. While it will still take some time for the ozone hole to heal, if countries hadn’t acted to ban ozone-destroying substances, like the 1996 ban on CFC’s, the situation could have been much worse.

Ozone Pollution – Ozone (O3), can be found in the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere, (down here where we are). This “bad” ozone is man-made, a result of air pollution from internal combustion engines and power plants. Automobile exhaust and industrial emissions release a family of nitrogen oxide gases (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC), by-products of burning gasoline and coal. NOx and VOC combine chemically with oxygen to form ozone during sunny, high-temperature conditions of late spring, summer and early fall.

Sustainable – The ability at harvesting or using resources to meet the needs of the present, without depleting or permanently damaging resources, polluting the environment, or compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Like these? Want more? Let me know…..

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Tags: air pollution, car, earth, electrical, electrics, energy, environment, Going Green, green, nitrogen oxide, ozone depletion, Ozone layer, power, Ultraviolet, Volatile organic compound

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 11:22 am and is filed under Going Green, Green Living, go green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.