An amazing evening! Wow… We had just over 50 people attend last night's Green Living Seminar – making it the second most attended LTTG class to dated (the first being the 2007 Wilderness Survival class).

The evening started with a brief introduction highlighting the fact that we can make a difference – both as an individual and as a community. Every little act of conservatism adds up and can change the world.  We just need to embrace change and rely on the Lord Almighty to work through us.

The speaker also made references to an article recently published in Delta's Sky magazine entitled "The Power of One". This article shares some numbers on how we can reduce waste and conserve our natural resources. Some of the figures include:

• If the thermostats in every house in America were lowered 1 degree Fahrenheit during the winter, the nation would save 230 million barrels of crude oil—enough to fill an oil tanker 400 times. (That’s the amount of oil being imported into the United States from Iraq each year.)
• If Delta’s 40 million SkyMiles members were to spend 1 minute less each day in the shower over their lifetimes, they would save 4 trillion gallons of water—the total amount of snow and rain that falls over the entire lower 48 United States in a day.[@more@]
• One out of every 3 pounds of the waste that Americans generate is just for packaging, which each year adds up to 77 million tons—enough to fill the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans 37 times.
• If every American collected 1 gallon of water once a week while waiting for the shower or bathwater to get hot (use it to water your houseplants!), the total saved would be 15.8 billion gallons of water a year—enough to fill the Reflecting Pool at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., 2,338 times.
• Replacing just one 500-sheet roll of virgin toilet paper a year with one 500-sheet roll of 100 percent recycled paper in every American household would leave 424,000 trees standing—16 times as many trees as in New York City’s Central Park.
• If one 20-mile trip per week was cut out (by combining errands) for every registered vehicle in the United States, 145 million fewer tons of greenhouse gases would be released into the air each year. That’s equal to the annual carbon dioxide emissions from 36 coal-fired power plants.

After the introduction, we broke up into three classes to allow people to drill down into certain areas:

• Energy savings at home / in your small businesses
• Cleaning without poisoning yourself or the environment
• Driving alternatives – gas efficiency/biodiesel/electric

I'm going to try to post some highlights from each of the three classes this week – so stay tuned.

After the classes where finished, we all returned to the main chapel to browse the tables of the classes we didn't get to attend (that whole "can't be in two places at one time deal").  What's amazing is that everyone returned!  I thought folks would spilt after their class finished, but they didn't – they came back and pick up some information and chatted a bit.

Overall it was a wonderful evening.

Many thanks to the Education Coordinator and all the volunteers who help advertised, set up, tear down and/or teach the classes. You guys ROCK!!!!