With the U.S. being the largest consumer of oil, we go through the stuff like water. Besides the obvious things, like driving a car, we don't even realize how many things we use that contain petroleum: plastic bags and water bottles, makeup products, CDs and DVDs, as well as the gas used to transport our food and goods from all over the world.
Let's try to make an impact and wean ourselves off oil, starting with a weekend — this weekend, to be exact.
August 21-22 has been named the Weekend Without Oil. Created by DoSomething.org to get people to use as little oil and petroleum-based products this weekend. For every person that pledges, they estimate an offset of 6 gallons of oil. Their goal is to get 166,000 on board.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2010.