Ways to Green-Up Your Life

Eco-Action Tip: Sun Power
Adjust your window blinds to reduce energy used for heating and cooling. In the summer, keep sunny-side blinds closed. In the winter, open up and let the sunshine in to help heat your home.

EcoAction Tip: Get Involved-
Join a local action group that promotes environmentally friendly practices, organize carpooling or petition your municipality to increase local energy conservation measures. One person really can make a difference-and inspire others to as well!

Eco Action Tip: Plant a Tree, Seriously
A single tree can absorb one ton (2,000 pounds) of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. One acre of tree cover in Brooklyn can compensate for automobile fuel use equivalent to driving a car between 7,200 and 8,700 miles.

Eco-Action Tip: Go "Green" When You Clean
Many household cleaning products contain various chemicals and toxins detrimental to the environment and to your health. Read the labels!

Eco-Action Tip: Grow Your Own
Plant a garden or a few pots of veggies without pesticides and chemical fertilizers that can harm both human health and the environment. How delightful to step out the back door and pick a ripe, organic tomato!

Eco-Action Tip: Avoid Products with a Lot of Packaging
You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide a year if you cut down your garbage by 10%.

Eco-Action Tip: Drive Smart
Try walking, riding a bike or combining trips in your car to cut back on the miles that you drive each day. If you stopped driving just 20 extra miles per week for one year, you could save about 900 pounds of CO2 per year.

Eco-Action Tip: Office Overhaul
At home or on the job, switch to "green" office supplies, such as recycled paperclips, tree-free note pads and 100% recycled paper. Producing recycled paper requires about 60 percent of the energy used to make paper from virgin wood pulp.

Eco-Action Tip: Turn Out the Lights
Before leaving your home or office, make sure all of the lights are turned off. This simple task will save energy and save you money.

Eco-Action Tip: Buy Recycled Products
Buying new products made from recycled materials allows you to "close the loop," creating a market for the recycled material items recycled curbside or in other recycling programs.
Eco-Action Tip: Switch to Organics
Organic agriculture protects the health of all the earth's inhabitants by limiting input of toxic and persistent chemicals into the air, soil and water. Organic methods support natural ecosystems by using long-term farming solutions that help preserve the earth's resources for future generations.

Eco-Action Tip: Start a Compost Pile in Your Yard
As landfill space becomes increasingly scarce and expensive, composting is an extremely valuable idea for reducing needless garbage. Composting requires little effort and, in time, will create an earthy, crumbly substance to help your plants flourish.

Eco-Action Tip: Buy in Bulk
Purchasing food in bulk allows you to choose just how much or how little of a certain product you want. This reduces both product waste and packaging waste.

Eco-Action Tip: Quench with Respect
80% of the 25 billion single-serving plastic water bottles Americans use each year end up in landfills. Recycle your bottles, or better yet, choose to reuse with a refillable water bottle made of a refill-safe material.

Eco-Action Tip: Reduce Hot Water Use
Wash your clothes in cold or warm water to save up to 500 pounds of CO2 per year. Rinse your dishes with cold water (they don't need two hot baths), and wait to run the dishwasher until it is full.

Eco-Action Tip: Recycle More
You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your household waste.

Eco-Action Tip: Support Eco-Smart Packaging
When shopping for packaged products, seek out companies that use minimal amounts of packaging and use recycled and/or recyclable materials.

Eco-Action Tip: Be Disposable Conscious
To decrease waste, purchase durable, long-lasting products that can be reused or refilled, such as rechargeable batteries and refillable razors. If you do use disposables, choose those made with eco-friendly materials from companies you can trust.

Eco-Action Tip: Choose Your Food Like it Matters
Choose products from companies and businesses that do something to support the health of the planet. And, eat as many whole foods as possible. Not only are they better for you, but they're better for the Earth. The more whole the food is, the fewer the resources used to get it to your plate.

Eco-Action Tip: Reuse Your Bags
More than one billion single-use plastic bags are handed to consumers each day and it takes a 15-year-old tree to produce just 700 grocery bags. Paper or plastic is no longer the question. Reusing shopping bags significantly reduces both emissions and waste. All Whole Foods Market stores offer at least a nickel-per-bag refund to encourage you!

Eco-Action Tip: Change a Light
Twenty percent of the electricity consumed in the United States is for lighting. Replacing one regular bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Eco-Action Tip: Tread Lightly
Walk, bike, carpool or take mass-transit more often. You'll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don't drive, reducing your carbon weight, and maybe some body weight, too!

Eco-Action Tip: Turn Off Electronics
Simply turning off your TV, DVD player, stereo and computer when you're not using them will save thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Some appliances even use electricity when turned off, so unplug those used infrequently.

Eco-Action Tip: Think Before You Print
It takes 390 gallons of oil to produce a ton of paper. To reduce the amount of paper that gets thrown away or recycled, triple check documents before printing. When you print drafts, try printing on the other side of used paper.

Eco-Action Tip: Keep Your Appliances Clean
Cleaning your refrigerator coils and heating vents regularly allows them to operate much more efficiently. When appliances aren't forced to work as hard, you reduce your electric bill while reducing energy.

Eco-Action Tip: Cut Back on Water Use
In the United States, 27 percent of our water is used in bathing. Instead of taking a bath, take a quick shower and use a water-conserving showerhead, which can save 350 pounds of CO2 a year. Repair leaky faucets, too, as they could leak up to 100 gallons of water per day!

Eco-Action Tip: Stop the Junk Mail Overload
The public landfill is approximately 36% waste paper products. Unwanted junk mail contributes to that, while also wasting energy and trees. Sign up for a "mail preference service" that can decrease the amount of mail you receive by up to 75%.

Eco-Action Tip: Don't Trash Clothing
Use worn out t-shirts, towels and bed linens as rags for cleaning around the house. Pass along unwanted clothes to friends, family or charitable organizations.

Eco-Action Tip: Adjust Your Thermostat
Moving your thermostat down just 2 degrees in the winter and up 2 degrees in the summer could save 2,000 pounds of CO2.

7 easy ways to save energy this summer

If your idea of conserving energy during the summer months is lying very, very still on a hammock for long periods of time, I hear you. But as the prices of pretty much everything in our lives keep going up (and our salaries don't), it pays to think about conserving energy in the home, too. Here are 7 easy ways to use, and thus pay for, less energy, courtesy of Brian Keane, President of Smartpower.org, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the use of clean energy.


1. Air-dry beach towels. Using a towel for 2 minutes to pat swimming pool water off your 8-year-old's body does not necessarily make it dirty. Think about whether a beach towel needs to be washed before you automatically dump it in the laundry, and if you do wash it, air dry the towel whenever possible. Beach towels are much thicker than regular towels and require a lot more energy to dry. Why not toss them over the porch railing to air out in the sun instead?

2. Take shorter showers. Studies show that the average teenager spends a whopping 45 minutes in the shower. 45 minutes! Encourage your kids to cut down on their American Idol practice time, and remind your husband that men who shave in the shower are wasting water, too, to the tune of several gallons. Bottom line: If you're not actively sudsing or rinsing, turn the water off.

3. Unplug your TV. It's probably not news to any of you at this point that all plugged-in electronics constantly suck energy even when they're "turned off," but recently, the triple threat of flat screen TVs, cable boxes, and DVR devices have officially overtaken refrigerators as the biggest energy drain in American homes. And while the fridge at least has an excuse for being plugged in all the time, the TV really does not. Plug all those devices into a power strip and turn the whole thing off when you're not watching. If you can't commit to a regular unplugging regimen, at the very least make sure the set is unplugged when you go on vacation for a week. (While you're at it, unplug computer printers, coffee makers and extra phone chargers when you're going to be gone for a few days. Don't forget to do the same at the office—just because you're not paying the bill doesn't mean you should waste the power.)

4. Remember what I said about the refrigerator and the energy suck? The good news is, every year refrigerators are getting more energy efficient, and it's almost hard NOT to buy one with an Energy Star rating these days. The downside is that many people, upon upgrading to a better refrigerator, just move the old one to the garage and keep using it. But consider this: "There's a reason you replaced the old one—it was too small, it didn't work well, it was inefficient—so why would you keep it around?" Keane says. Think long and hard about what exactly you so desperately need to keep in deep-freeze storage. Extra ice for parties? Buy an ice chest. That 40 pounds of moose meat you ordered online from your meat-of-the-month club? I have no advice for you, other than reevaluate what's in your main freezer and check out Energy Star's Recycle My Old Fridge Campaign web site for information on responsible old-fridge disposal.

5. Really turn off your home computer. 75% of the energy used by home computers is used when the owner thinks the computer is turned off. "Sleep" does not equal off: Learn it, love it, live it.

6. Weather-strip your doors. "It's just as important in the summer as in the winter," Keane says. If you want to keep your air conditioning inside the house, make sure that your home's doors have the proper seals. (Bonus: weather stripping is incredibly cheap—we're talking $1.50 a roll—and as easy to apply as a piece of tape.) And of course, make sure all your windows are closed when the air conditioner's running. What are you trying to do, cool the whole neighborhood?

7. Get your water heater checked. Schedule an appointment with your plumber (or ask him to stick around the next time he comes to fix something else) and have him check the settings on your water heater. Although many water heaters are set at 140 degrees Fahrenheit, most homes only need 120 degrees for appliances to function properly. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that lowering your water temperature by ten degrees will save you 3 to 5% in energy costs (not to mention lower your risk of scalding).