300 million pounds of dry-cleaning bags end up in U.S. landfills and waterways annually

Green bag from Green Garmento

However, reusable alternatives to these clear used once plastic bags are becoming popular and adapted by people. Green Garmento reports as much as 60% up-take, which is great, but that’s little more than a half-hearted effort by the general public as there is still 40% to convert. This one is a no brainer without excuses other than your own laziness, people!

– Globe and Mail (June 16 2009), Green Garmento from the Environmental Impact Calculator

If the energy efficiency of the US’ top 10 states could be achieved by the remaining states, 30% of US electricity consumption could be saved, cutting $100 billion in electricity bills, 60% of coal fired electricity, 779 million tons of CO2 to offset the Dutch and UK emissions.

Efficiency was measured by dividing each state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (total value of all goods and services produced) by the kilowatt hours of electricity it consumed. That’s basically how much money a state could put into the economy for each unit of energy consumed.

Nice stat, but I’d bet if these states made more money per unit of energy, their lifestyle would see more spending and with it, more energy. That would reduce the “efficiency”.

However, the information is still neat to look at how widely states vary for how much they make per unit of energy spent.

New York was at the top with $7.18 for each kilowatt hour of electricity (a 15W compact fluorescent light burning for 66 hours 40 minutes, 66.7 hrs), while Mississippi was at the bottom, by far, at just over $3 per kilowatt hour.

See how other states did in comparison with this really cool interactive map!

Sources:
Rocky Mountain Institute (original source)
Yahoo! Green for additional statistical comparisons for context