Benefits of a Hybrid

If you knew that the sleek, tiny Prius could save you over $4,000 per year on gas, you’d consider kicking your Hummer H2 to the curb, right? This infographic gives you a million reasons why hybrid cars are better for the environment and your wallet. The appropriately green background has sort of a recycled paper texture–a nice touch that ties into the theme. Consider how much you drive on a daily basis; maybe you can walk to the grocery store for that daily Red Bull instead of driving there.

UK Exhibition CO2 Emissions

All the travel by United Kingdom citizens for exhibitions alone in 2009 produced over 60,000 tons of CO2–that’s equal to a car circumnavigating the equator 9,023 times! Remember, that’s only travel related to exhibitions in the United Kingdom. It doesn’t include leisure travel, travel to and from work, or anything else. Suggestions on how to reduce the environmental impact of travel follow the statistics given in this infographic. Consider calculating your carbon footprint to find out how much carbon dioxide you use.

Is It Really Green?

Green products are incredibly marketable–9 out of 10 shoppers feel the environmental impact of a product is important to consider when making a purchase, and 7 out of 10 will pay up to 20% more for a green product than a regular one. However, many companies will advertise a product as being more environmentally friendly than it really is. This infographic shows how to tell just how green a material is and get around the hype. It’s amazing what misleading terms are legal to use, even when they don’t accurately describe the product inside.

UPS: Keeping the Blue Skies Green

UPS, a top shipping company, uses its own fleet of airplanes to transport packages around the world. All that travel is taxing on the environment, but they’ve got plans for reducing their CO2 emissions and other harmful practices to “keep the blue skies green.” By 2010, they’d already surpassed their fuel efficiency goals for 2011. See how one company makes plans to go green, and think about what your company can do to reduce its carbon footprint.

Top Countries With Endangered Species

The United States has a total of 1,203 endangered species (both plant and animal) making it the country with the second highest number of endangered species in the world. Our country has more endangered fish and mollusks than any other country in the world. Ecuador is the number one country, and it has nearly twice the number of endangered species. The importance of species preservation is emphasized here.

How Higher Learning Affects the Environment

Student use of paper and gas could be greatly reduced by taking online classes. Eighteen million students use 900,000 tons of paper, but doing school work on a computer would eliminate most of that. Use of gas to get to and from school would also decrease or cease. This infographic makes the argument that online schooling is better for the environment.

Is Cannabis Treated Unfairly?

Green… get it? This is a very different type of green, but it does tie in in a way. It compares cannabis to other street drugs and shows the cost of imprisonment for various drug-related crimes. While this infographic isn’t about environmentally friendly products, it does show the costs of another type of green living!

November 15 is America Recycles Day, so gather up those bottles and cans and contribute to a new wave of environmental consciousness. These infographics show how important taking care of our planet really is, and utilizing the tips provided to boost your knowledge of green living will be beneficial for everyone.

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<div align="center"><a href="http://www.submitinfographics.com/full-size-infographics/2011HomeTrends.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.submitinfographics.com/full-size-infographics/2011HomeTrends.jpg" alt="infographic" width="620" height="2307"><br />Click to Enlarge</a><br /><a href="http://www.elocalwebsites.com/" target="_blank">eLocal.com</a><br />View Other <a href="http://www.submitinfographics.com">Infographics</a></div> <p>

This infographic comes to us from elocalwebsites.com, a company that focuses on designing directories for local businesses including roofers, plumbers, lawyers, and more. Upon submitting this infographic, the folks at eLocal said the following:

If you’d think 50 experts would have a lot to say on home improvement trends in 2011, well, then you’d be right! We had such a great response to the 2nd eLocal.com Blog-Off that we ended up with volumes of information and insight.

After a little bit of magic, we packaged everything you need to know into the below infographic, giving you your complete guide to 2011 home improvement trends. Let the inspiration begin!

All in all, the design of this infographic is nice and clean, and it’s definitely fun to look at. My issue with it is the same that keeps popping up as more and more companies create their first infographic: there’s no data being visualized. An infographic is a graphic representation of information. It should include charts and graphs as well as text, but shouldn’t rely on text only to get the information across. Right now, if all of the text were taken out of this infographic, not a single piece of information or data would be provided to the viewer. That means that this is not using graphics to display the information, instead the graphics are merely complimenting the information. While these graphics do a great job of complimenting the information, it’s basically a well designed article. To improve things and make this more like an infographic, the folks at eLocalWebsites.com could have included graphs showing the money spent in each home improvement trend. They could show popularity by getting keyword traffic data from Google. They could also show how these trends are improving the value of homes by diving into the profit gained per home improvement. Unfortunately, none of this is happening, which makes this infographic hard to take in. Infographics should require as little reading as possible, and this only requires reading.