Home and Work

Be A Green Community Leader
Learn the Five Steps to taking charge in your community and taking a lead in making it more sustainable, healthier and reputable.

Build A Rain Garden
Help improve the water quality in your community and provide food and shelter for wildlife by redirecting storm water to a rain garden. 70% of pollution in streams, rivers and lakes are carried there by storm water. Rain gardens can help prevent this. Learn more.

Challenge Yourself
Every time you toss something out, challenge yourself to see how it might impact your community and the environment and see if you can think of ways to lower its impact or buy less of it next time.

Get An Energy Audit
An energy audit is the first step in assessing how much energy your home consumes and to evaluate what measures you can take to make your home more energy efficient. In our homes, over 40% of energy goes to heating and cooling, 20% goes to water heating and lighting and 15% goes to appliance use, including refrigeration. You can perform a simple energy audit yourself with a simple walk-through to spot many types of problems in any building. The U.S. Department of Energy has a lot of information on  Do-It-Yourself Home Energy Assessments. You can also hire a  professional energy auditor to conduct a more thorough audit.

Green Intimacy
Yes, it exists and no, I'm not kidding. With all the ways we've managed to be  environmentally destructive, don't think for a second that we haven't thought of all the ways we can be environmentally sustainable as well. Greenpeace and other editorials express their opinions and advice on  eco-sex, which is believed to enhance once's sex life, relationship and health .

Switch To Radiant Heating
Radiant Heating is technology for heating indoor and outdoor areas. Radiant Heating consists of radiant energy being emitted from a heat source, such as a floor, wall or overhead panel. This energy warms people and objects in rooms rather than directly heating the air through traditional convection heating. Radiant Heating is affordable to the average person, uses significantly less fossil fuels and leads to a cleaner environment. Learn more.

Make Rags Out Of Old Towels And Donate Your Old Clothes
Instead of tossing old towels or clothing, reuse them as rags or donate them to charity.

Take Shorter Showers
to conserve water and save on heating and water bills. For every two minutes you save on your shower, you conserve more than ten gallons of water - and this can surely add up.

Wrap An Insulation Blanket Around Your Water Heater
to contain much of the heat that would otherwise escape. Learn more.

Fill A Jar With Water And Put It In The Toilet Tank
so you use less water with each flush. Learn more.

Learn To Manage Waste
Waste is an everyday part of our lives that in most cases is unavoidable, but making a habit out of properly reducing, reusing and recycling waste is good for people and the planet. Reduce Waste.

Use A Little Less Detergent
than manufacturers suggest. Detergent manufacturers suggest more than the amount actually needed to effectively wash your clothes and keep them clean. Fabrics can even deteriorate over time if too much detergent is used. Learn more.

Clean Your Dryer Lint Screen
This, coupled with not overloading your dryer, will save you 5% on your electricity bill and can save you on repair bills. Learn more.

Make Your Own Non-Toxic Cleaning Product
Huffpost Green, Care 2, Sharing Sustainable Solutions, The Modern Pet Blog, Wired Mamas and Eco-Cycle can help make this little experiment a success and into a family activity. Everything you need is probably already in your pantry!

Use A Garden Hose Automatic Shut- Off Nozzle
By using a hose nozzle, you prevent wasted water when the hose is being turned on and off and is not in use to allow yourself full control over the water. This can save you up to 6.5 gallons of water per minute by allowing you the precision of watering only what needs to be watered. Freshwater depletion is a growing global problem and has already hit hard in many parts of the world. A little mindfulness goes a long way!

Plant A Backyard Or Rooftop Organic Garden
and grow your own produce with no toxic pesticides or harmful chemicals and with minimal costs! Learn more.

Free-Cycling
The only thing better than recycling your waste is giving it away for free! There is a very good chance that your garbage is someone else's treasure. An old, worn out computer can be valuable to another person whose willing to fix and reuse it. Freecycling  is a worldwide "gifting" group aiming to divert reusable gifts from landfills. This organization is available in over 85 countries with thousands of local groups and millions of members. Check for your  local Freecycle center.

Rinse Out Ziploc Bags And Use Again
Discover more ways to cut your use of plastic.

Install A Rain Sensor To Sprinkler Systems
A rain sensor can override an automatic sprinkler cycle by detecting rain events occurring before or after a scheduled watering and canceling itself. Depending on your local climate, this could lower your water bill and consumption by 30%.

Use Recycled Envelopes
Using recycled envelopes instead of envelopes made from virgin paper would save an immense amount of paper material, especially in an office setting where envelopes are used daily. Learn more.

Use Refillable Pens, Pencils And Markers
Disposable plastic pens aren't recyclable or biodegradable. You can save yourself money from having to continuously buy new pens by purchasing one pen and refillable ink to use again and again. A disposable pen tossed in the garbage will remain  in a landfill for tens of thousands of years, or more. Learn more.

Use Both Sides Of Paper
Whether it's for copying or printing, always try to use both sides of a paper. If only one out of every four office workers made all of their copies double sided, they would save 130 billion sheets of paper annually.

Run Full Loads In Your Dishwasher
By making sure your washer is full of plates, glasses and utensils before you hit "start" and by not pre-rinsing your dishes before placing them into the dishwasher, you will save energy and up to 20 gallons of water per dish load. This equates to 7,300 gallons per year, which is as much water as the average person drinks in a year. Most dishwashers nowadays are powerful enough that they don't require pre-rinses. If your dishes need hand washing - turn off the tap while you scrub!

Flush Less Often
If it's yellow, let it mellow! If anyone complains, you can blame me =) By trying to flush one less time a day, you'll save about 4.5 gallons of water, which is as much as the average person in Africa uses for a whole day of drinking, cooking, bathing and cleaning.

Always Turn Off The Lights When Not Needed
When leaving a room, a simple switch of a light makes all the difference. Yet, a mind boggling amount of rooms are left lit for hours upon hours day and night unnecessarily. Furthermore, if there is natural light from the sun available, you can also turn off lights at home or at work.

Avoid Plastic Liner Shower Curtains
These plastic liners are usually made with PVC, the most toxic plastic in the world. PVC is non-recyclable and can be extremely harmful to your health and the environment, yet PVC plastic waste amounts to 1.23 million tons a year.

Efficiently Clean Your Fish T ank And Water Plants Without A Need For Chemicals
When cleaning your fish tank, remove only 1/3-1/2 of the water and use this nutrient-rich solution for indoor and outdoor plants to eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers and to conserve water. Then, teach your friends who own fish tanks and plants the same trick!

Sweep Outside Instead Of Using A Hose

Leave Grass Clippings On The Lawn After Mowing
An average home can reduce its fertilizer requirements by up to 25% by simply leaving the grass clippings on the lawn after mowing. This "grass-cycling" and reduction in fertilizer use ultimately lessens the amount of diesel fuel needed to make the fertilizer and saves you money. Learn more.

Choose Matches Over Lighters
The plastic casing and butane fuel for lighters are both made from petroleum and over 1.5 billion of these end up in landfills or incinerators each year. Also, choose the cardboard box of matches as opposed to the wooden one. Cardboard usually comes from recycled paper whereas wood comes from trees.

Repair Leaky Toilets And Faucets
which can waste 200 gallons of water or more every day and can account for, on average, 10,000 gallons of water wasted in the home every year, which is enough to fill a backyard swimming pool! Learn more.

Own A Swimming Pool?
Save yourself money and the environment pain with IntelliFlo VF High Performance Pump, the world's smartest swimming pool pump. You can save an average of $620-$1360 in utility costs annually. A worthwhile investment, especially for those planning to own a pool for many years.

Lobby Your Local Government
Lobby your local government for sustainable developments, such as increasing spending on sidewalks and bike lanes. With little costs, these improvements can pay huge dividends in enriching your health and reducing traffic. Learn more.

Use A Drying Rack Or Clothesline
to save the energy otherwise used during machine drying. The sun dries for free!

Make Coffee at Home
and drink it from a reusable stainless steel container or ceramic mug. Take-away coffee is almost always served in either plastic containers or paper cups created from unsustainable and destructive sources, such as rainforest deforestation. Also, consider organic coffee!

Efficient Plastic Bag Recycling
If you're a consumer, bring your accumulated plastic bags to a retailer or recycling drop-off center near you. If you are the owner or part of a  business or retailer, create or advocate for a plastic recovery program either through pick up service or drop-off at a recycling center.

Use Rags Instead Of Paper Towels
to wipe up spills and clean up messes. You'll be surprised at just how much paper towels you were using unnecessarily and how much of them you could be saving by simply using a rag or a sponge. Most paper towels come directly from trees, aside from 100% recycled ones, which are on decline in many parts of the world.

Do You Really Need The Phone Book?
There are now online directories to information on virtually any person. Recycle your phone book or better yet - call to cancel your phone book delivery. Believe it or not, telephone books make up almost 10% of waste at dump sites!

Purchase Inkjet Printers
Laser printers use 300 watts of electricity while inkjet printers use only 10. Workers alone can save an amount equal to 5% of all home electricity used in the United States just by using inkjet printers. Also, don't forget to recycle the ink cartridge and use double-sided pages if possible.

Cut Back On Television
by encouraging families to spend more time participating in activities that don't require electricity and create stronger bonds. Watching too much television can also cause serious health issues overtime considering 5 million people die worldwide from a 'couch potato lifestyle'.

Reduce Food Waste
When baking and cooking, try to avoid wasting food by measuring the amount of food you will need carefully, using ingredients before they spoil, saving leftovers for future meals, for composting or even for pets if need be - instead of throwing them away. If you could reduce the amount of food wasted in your household by just 25 grams a day, which is about the weight of one slice of bread, you could save twenty pounds of food annually, which is just enough to make about 16 meals.

Use Your Microwave And Keep It Clean
This way, you will maximize its energy, which means less electricity used, less time cooking and of course - less money spent. Microwaves are between 3.5 and 4.8 times more energy efficient than traditional electric ovens. If it costs 10 cents to cook one item in a microwave, it would cost 48 cents to cook that same item in a standard oven. 

Use Eco- Staplers
These staplers do not use metal staplers and are just as effective when stapling five pages or less. If 1/2 of the documents being stapled each year were bound without staples, we would save one trillion staples from the trash and reduce the more than a billion tons of metal used every year to make staples.

Use A Water Filter
Instead of buying bottled water, install a water filter to your faucet to ensure the safety of the tap water and save plenty of money over time as tap water costs 1/10 the price of bottled water. You can buy a water filter for as little as $29 and in doing so - you also avoid the many problems associated with plastics. Plus it tastes better filtered! Water filtration systems trump bottled water in practically all aspects.

Standby Those Copy Machines
When not in use, press the "standby" button on your copier to reduce your energy usage by 70%. Learn more.

Use A Ceramic Mug Or Reusable Cup Or Bottle For Your Coffee
Americans use enough paper cups in one year to circle the globe 55 times. Avoid paper and styrofoam cups with reusable mugs, cups or bottles. These cups largely come from trees and styrofoam cups remain on the planet for nine generations.

Recycle Paper At Work
Offices can reduce their waste by 50% simply by recycling the immense amount of paper they use by steering it clear of landfills and towards recycled paper products.

Use Your Outdoor Lighting Efficiently
When not needed, turn off your outdoor lights or use timers or motion sensors instead to reduce light pollution.

Get Outdoors More
Get outside, hike through a forest, park or mountain, take a swim in a lake, river or ocean, go camping, picnicking, visit nature centers and observe wildlife. Spending time outdoors can lower your blood pressure, fight off depression, beat back stress and even prevent cancer. Children who spend more time outdoors are less likely to develop myopia (near-sightedness) than children who spend more time indoors. Spending time outdoors can keep you healthier, fit, embraced to the natural world, can improve our cognitive abilities, help prevent developing allergies and asthma and even improve your eyesight! You can even help clean up the environment while exercising outdoors. Learn more.

Lunch Break At Work
Most office workers order in or take away from a coffee shop. Try to request less packaging and only the utensils and ingredients you need. On average, Americans use 6 napkins per day. If workers alone just used 1 fewer napkin per day, it would save about 150 million of them from landfills. If possible, bring in lunch from home to save money and waste.

Don't Let Your Car Idle For Too Long!
Try to limit the amount of time your car is running in the garage and make sure to leave those garage doors open. An idling car emits 20 times more pollution than one traveling 32mph and that is not something you want in your garage!

Using Your Sprinklers
Try to set your sprinklers to turn on early morning or evening. The average lawn needs only one hour of watering per week, which is less than the average of 40% household water bills accounting to outdoor water usage.

Avoid Individual Packets Of Sugar
The packets contain as much packaging as the sweetener in it. Try to use the loose sugar in containers instead.

Try To Avoid Cover Pages When Faxing
This will save paper on both ends of the transmission. 17 million trees a year are cut just for supplying the United States with fax paper. Even better avoid faxing all together if possible, and email!

Use Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs
Upon burning out, replace any incandescent light bulbs with compact florescent light bulbs. This saves you money and promotes cleaner air by   using 75% less energy and lasting 10 times longer than standard bulbs. If every American changed just five bulbs to CFL's, we'd prevent more than one trillion pounds of greenhouse gases out of the air, which is equal to $6 billion in energy savings for Americans and the emissions of 8 million cars.

Origin And Effects Of Rubber Bands
About 3/4 of rubber bands are made from crude oil and release harmful pollutants when incinerated. Try to get creative and put put things together otherwise!

Use Drip Irrigation Or Soaker Hoses Instead Of Sprinklers
Using either one of these two methods as opposed to sprinklers will save you up to 70% of the water typically used through sprinklers because only the base of the plants will be receiving water and evaporation will be minimal. Learn more.

Take Action Against PVC
PVC is the most toxic plastic in the world, harming our health and the environment. No other plastic contains or releases so many dangerous chemicals. There is no safe way to manufacture, use or dispose of PVC products. Go PVC-free! Learn more.

Use Vinegar In The Rinse Cycle
to soften clothes instead of chemical-based fabric softeners. Vinegar can also be used to kill mold instead of bleach. Vinegar is more effective and less damaging to your lungs. Learn more.

Telecommute Or Teleconference
Join the 44 million people who work from home. This saves money and avoids trips by car and airplane. Telecommuting thus far is preventing more than 2 billion gallons of gasoline per year. Furthermore, if it suits you - see if your employer will allow you to work 4 longer days instead of 5 normal shifts. Any technical solution that helps reduce employee travel is always a plus for your pocket and the environment.

Using A Garbage Disposal Unit
These devices, usually electronically powered, are installed under a kitchen sink to shred food waste into pieces small enough to pass through plumbing. Use cold water when running your garbage disposal or even better - don't use it at all! Instead, compost your food waste. This will save you money on maintaining your septic system and your drain will be less clogged. Garbage disposal units can disrupt nutrient balances in water and soil ecosystems, which can ultimately harm wildlife. Learn more.

Dispose Of Litter Properly
Most of us agree litter is a major environmental, health and societal problem. The biggest sources of litter are cigarette butts, fast-food packaging, cans and bottles, including the ring pulls and tops, and candy wrappers. Do your best to dispose of waste properly. Learn more.

Filter Your Tap Water
"You’ll reduce your exposure to known or suspected carcinogens and hormone-disrupting chemicals. A new report from the President’s Cancer Panel on how to reduce exposure to carcinogens suggests that home-filtered tap water is a safer bet than bottled water, whose quality often is not higher—and in some cases is worse—than that of municipal sources, according to a study by the Environmental Working Group. (Consumer Reports’ top picks for faucet-mounted filters: Culligan, Pur Vertical, and the Brita OPFF-100.) Store water in stainless steel or glass to avoid chemical contaminants such as BPA that can leach from plastic bottles." ~ 20 Ways to Prevent Cancer, by Yahoo Shine

Watch The Story of Stuff
This excellent video can completely change the way you see and use "things" forever. Take the next twenty minutes and invest in knowledge that can last a lifetime. Learn more.

Use An Efficient Fireplace
Unless a fire is up and running, keep the damper 'door' closed. 8% of heat in the winter and cool air in the summer can escape through a fireplace if not properly sealed. This lost air adds up in costs.

Discover The Power Of Closed Curtains And Shades
When its cold in the winter and sunny in the summer, close the curtains/shades for additional insulation and you can reduce your energy needs by up to 25%. This one definitely wins the award for the easiest and biggest money and energy saver! Learn more.

Monitor Water Quality
Help improve your local watershed  and build community awareness on pollution problems by volunteering to  monitor and assess water quality. If you live in the United States, you can  locate your local watershed here.

Weatherize your Dwelling
For every $1 spent on weatherization , $1.80 is saved over time. Weatherization can reduce energy bills by 32%  saving you an average of $437/year and is achieved by modifying a building or home to reduce energy consumption . Weathering home improvements will last for many years and will lower energy bills in all seasons. A tight, well insulated house  saves energy, allows for smaller capacity heating and cooling systems and provides a comfortable environment with smaller temperature swings. Learn more.

Smart Energy Meters
Smart Energy Meters transmit and receive data to and from your energy supplier while providing you a digital display of the current total power consumption, along with appropriate figures for cost, CO2 emissions and comparisons of energy used on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. This informative awareness is a very powerful tool in realizing the sources of your energy consumption and in setting goals for yourself to maintain a certain percentage or number of energy usage. Smart Energy Meters include  Wattson, PowerCost Monitor, Energy Joule, and Kill A Watt. Learn more.

Plant A Tree Or Two
Add beauty to your surroundings while reforesting your community. Trees absorb CO2 at a rate of 14lbs/tree/year and provide a  plethora of benefits  for humans, wildlife, and the environment. Visit Gurney's Seed and Nursery, Nurseryman, Sheffield's Seed Company, or Whatcom Seed Company  to purchase seeds. Learn more.

Refuse Disposable Stirrers And Straws
For coffee, just pour in your milk and sugar first and then the coffee or simply ask the server to do so. As for straws, if you're a man, you should especially avoid straws! Women like men who drink like men should - straight from the cup or bottle! Americans throw away 138 billion straws and stirrers each year, enough to create a statue 20 times higher than the Statue of Liberty. 

Creative T rash Bags
Use leftover plastic or paper bags as liners for your trash cans. You'll save yourself time and money at the trash-liner bag isle in the supermarket.

Healthier Storage Containers
Instead of using plastic containers, store your food in porcelain or glass containers to lessen the amount of chemicals that will likely leech from the containers into the food. These chemicals can transfer from plastic to food and food to body causing various health issues. Learn more.

Christmas Tree
Always recycle your Christmas tree! How and where to re cycle your Christmas tree after the holidays.

Cover Your Pool When Not In Use
This will cut water lost to evaporation by 90% and consequently, the cost of replenishing that water. An average pool with average wind and sun exposure loses approximately 1000 gallons of water per month. This is enough water to serve a family of four for nearly a year and a half.

Preheating your Oven
If you're roasting, baking or broiling a dish that will cook for an hour or more, there is no need to preheat your oven. Even for cakes and bread, you don't need to preheat for longer than ten minutes. If you can reduce the amount of time your oven is on by only one hour a year, you would be saving an average of two kilowatt hours of energy.

Unplug Appliances Or Use A Smart Power Strip
Unplug appliances when you're not using them. Even when turned off, if an appliance is still plugged in, it consumes energy. Or use a smart power strip that senses when appliances are off and shuts power to them completely. Learn more.

Install Dimmer Switches To Your Lights
Learn how to install a dimmer switch for your home lighting system.

Turn Off Your Heater's Pilot Light In The Summer
The materials required are none. The time required is about 2 minutes per year. Your savings will be $30-$60 per year (depending on your furnace, your location, and gas prices) and your greenhouse gas reduction will be about 0.15 to 0.30 tons per year. Learn more.

Collect Rainwater
to water your houseplants and garden. Learn more.

Use Permanent Air Filters For AC And Furnace
By replacing your disposable air filter, which usually needs changing a few times a year, with a permanent one that can be washed and reused throughout your lifetime - you'll not only be saving money in the long run, but reducing the amount of waste you send to landfills. Learn more.

Decorate Your Surroundings With Plants
to improve air quality, make your home brighter, more attractive and breathable. Learn more.

Switch To Geothermal Heating
Geothermal Heating relies on the energy exchange between the air within the building being heated and the ground. Ten feet below the Earth's surface lies a consistent temperature of about 50ºF. This constant temperature is used to heat and cool a home through all seasons. Geothermal heating derives 70% of its energy from the Earth granting you great savings. Learn more.

Discover The World Of Trashion!
Instead of discarding a ripped pair of jeans, alter them to become something new. Learn more.

If You Eat Meat, Add One Meatless Day A Week
Doing so may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. Conventional meat is far more expensive when you consider the related health and environmental costs. To learn more about where your meat comes from, watch the documentary Food Inc. You can even try becoming a 'weekday vegetarian' or switching to organic, cruelty-free, growth hormone-free meat. Conventional meat causes more emissions worldwide than all the transportation combined. That includes cars, trucks, planes, ect.. There are 10 billion animals a year living short, torturous lives in factory farms, which can also increase your risk of dying by 1/3, if you eat a burger a day. Also, beef production uses 100 times more water than most fruits and vegetables. The list goes on and on. Organic or no meat is better for your body, for the animals and for the environment. Learn more.