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Your car:
- Inflate your tires to improve mileage; recheck monthly.
- Keep your air filter clean (change every 12,000 miles).
- Carpool or take public transportation to the office.
Your computer:
- Screen savers use lots of electricity – “sleep” or shut down instead.
- Turn your computer off at the end of each day and reduce annual carbon use.
- A laptop computer uses 50 to 75 percent less energy than a desktop.
Your electronics:
- Your TV, DVD player, stereo, computer, and other electronics use 40 percent of their energy when turned off but not unplugged.
- Plug ‘em all into a powerstrip and switch it off at night.
Your food:
- Shop farmers’ markets whenever you can – other produce is trucked an average of 1,500 miles to your local supermarket (visit localharvest.org for help).
- Eating vegetarian offsets much of your driving: Growing feed for animals, especially livestock, requires a great deal of land and energy. I’m a vegetarian and can report that soy-protein meats aren’t bad at all…I don’t miss not eating meat.
Your yard:
- A mature tree absorbs 48 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and turns it into enough oxygen to sustain two people.
- Strategically-planted trees provide shade on your house, cutting cooling costs.
- An hour of mowing creates pollution equivalent to driving a car 25 miles.
- Use slower-growing grasses on your lawn or plant native wildflowers to cut your mowing frequency.
- Use a push-mower.
Your lights:
- If every U.S. home switched to compact fluorescent bulbs, it would be like taking 2 million cars off our roads.
Your mail:
- Junk mail is tremendously wasteful. Get off many lists by visiting www.obviously.com/junkmail.
Easy Green Things You Can Do Today: Created on May 17th, 2011. Last Modified on January 21st, 2014
