reduce your environmental impact

Reduce Your Environmental Impact

Yes, you can save money, energy and help save our planet in just one month - without giving up modern conveniences. Just make one of these following small (and easy!) eco-changes each day this month for major environment-friendly results. Feel free to share your progress and ideas for ways to make a difference in the fight to save our planet at countryliving.com/gogreen.

~~Fluorescent Lightbulbs

Use soft-white compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs), not traditional incandescents.

BECAUSE: If every American household replaced one standard bulb with a CFL, we could save enough energy to power 3 million homes a year.

~~Place potted plants (like Boston ferns, peace lilies, or English ivy) on windowsills and tables.

BECAUSE: Fifteen plants can absorb most of the average home's airborne toxins within 24 hours.

~~Switch your computer display to go to sleep mode after five minutes of inactivity.

BECAUSE: Sleep mode consumes 90 percent less energy than an animated screen saver - which requires as much energy as normal use.

~~Return wire hangers to the dry cleaner.

BECAUSE: More than 3.5 billion hangers reach landfills each year, amounting to 200 million tons of steel that could be put to new use.

photo credit: kemie/istock

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~~Tighten your gas cap until it clicks three times.

BECAUSE: Each year in the United States , 147 million gallons of gasoline literally evaporate into the atmosphere because of loose, damaged, or missing caps.

~~Register to get your name off junk-mail lists.

BECAUSE: Printing junk mail wastes 100 million trees a year. Canceling can reduce your intake by 35 pounds a year. Sign up at proquo.com or at dmachoice.org.

~~Choose natural soy candles over petroleum-based paraffin.

BECAUSE: Paraffin emits 11 toxins; soy doesn't.

~~Scrub down your wheels at a car wash, not at home.

BECAUSE: A drive-through uses less than half the water per car than the typical do-it-yourselfer - and many establishments recycle their soap water.

~~Build a fire with an artificial, petroleum-free log made from wood fibers and biowaxes.

BECAUSE: Man-made logs, surprisingly, burn longer than wood and emit 75 percent less carbon monoxide.

~~Drive with cruise control on the highway.

BECAUSE: Keeping a steady pace burns gas at a constant rate, which lets you drive as much as 10 percent farther on a single tank.

~~Keep your freezer's temperature at 0 degrees F and your refrigerator between 35 degrees and 38 degrees.

BECAUSE: Adjusting a too-cold freezer by five degrees can cut its energy use by 20 percent.

~~Eat meat-free once a week.

BECAUSE: Producing a pound of beef consumes 145 times more fossil fuels than a pound of potatoes.

~~Bar Soap

Leave bar soap by the sink.

BECAUSE: Most liquid soap comes in nonrenewable plastic packaging. Substituting one bottle with a bar in each U.S. home would keep 2.5 million pounds of plastic out of landfills.

~~Organic Cotton Clothes

Wear organic cotton clothes.

BECAUSE: Organic cotton's low-impact production methods - which employ fewer pesticides - generate less than a fifth as much greenhouse gas as standard cotton.

~~Stash a pitcher of water in your fridge.

BECAUSE: A faucet releases a gallon a minute. Letting the tap run while the water cools wastes a resource that's often in limited supply.

~~Submit your taxes electronically.

BECAUSE: We would save 660 million sheets of paper - almost 80,000 trees - if every taxpayer filed electronically. Internal Revenue Service: irs.gov.

~~Donate your old cell phone to charity, or return it to the manufacturer for recycling.

BECAUSE: Electronic trash amounts to 70 percent of America 's toxic waste.

Information on donating can be found at sharetechnology.org and recycling at mygreenelectronics.com.

~~Plug your devices into power strips, and turn off the strips when you're not using them.

BECAUSE: Some plugged-in appliances and strips use electricity even when they're turned off. But one 6-outlet strip, when shut down, uses 87 percent less energy than devices left in six individual outlets.

~~Place a recycling bin next to the wastebasket in your home office, to make conserving paper as easy as discarding it.

BECAUSE: Producing one ton of paper from recycled pulp saves 7,000 gallons of water (and 17 trees).

~~Check the water meter. Then wait an hour, without using your faucets or toilets. Now check again. If the number rises during that time, call a plumber.

BECAUSE: A dripping tap wastes five gallons of water a day. Fixing a leak can save at least $50 a year.

~~Use your dishwasher's air-dry cycle, or switch the machine off after the final rinse and crack open the door.

BECAUSE: Skipping the heated-dry cycle can cut your per-wash energy use by up to 50 percent.

~~Use Reusable Shopping Bags

Stow a reusable bag in your car for errands.

BECAUSE: If every American stuck with cloth totes, we'd waste 380 billion fewer plastic bags this year.

~~Car Maintenance

Have your car's air filters cleaned and tires inflated.

BECAUSE: A yearly tune-up can improve your car's efficiency by 15 percent and keep more than one ton of carbon dioxide out of the air.

~~High-Efficiency Showerheads

Replace traditional showerheads with high-efficiency, 2.5-gallon-a-minute models.

BECAUSE: Your shower will consume 30 percent fewer gallons of water every time you wash.

~~Wash with Cold Water

Wash laundry in cold water, or use warm-wash and cold-rinse cycles.

BECAUSE: Most detergents work equally well regardless of water temperature. Using cold washes in every U.S. household would save the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil a day.

~~Use a toaster oven for simple baking tasks.

BECAUSE: The countertop appliances consume half as much energy as electric ovens (and keep the whole kitchen cooler)

With Many Thanks,

Mother Earth [forwarded from Donna]