Go Green!

10 tips for living a greener life:

1. Turn out the lights! When you leave a room, don't forget to flip the switch. If you're doing work and it's light out, but your area gets little natural light, move near a window or work outside to avoid wasting energy.

2. Borrow instead of buy. Gets books and movies from the library, a movie rental store, or mooch off of a friend. If it's something you're only going to use once, there's no sense in wasting the resources. If possible, find a couple neighbors that you trust to share big things like lawn mowers and snow blowers. If a product cannot be borrowed and is a necessity, buy used. If you can't find it used, buy the brand with the most eco-friendly policies and minimal packaging.

3. Write on the backs of used paper for notes. Why consume when there's perfectly usable stuff that you're just going to throw in the recycling bin anyway? Just 3-hole-punch the homework, essays, and assignment sheets of yesteryear, flip them upside-down, and put them in a binder.

4. Cut back on shower time. The average shower uses a little over 2 gallons per minute, which really starts to add up. If you reduced your shower by 2 minutes and showered every night, you would save 1,606 gallons in a year. Skipping days is encouraged if you've done nothing but sit in your house all day.

5. Plastic baggies are your enemy. A sandwich-sized plastic (but preferably glass) container will save you money and keep all of those bags out of the landfill. The average american kid puts 67 lbs of lunch wrapping waste in the landfills every school year (greenopolis,com). When it comes to saving bags, bring a cloth one to the store. Store bags are even more evil that lunch baggies. Also, carry a reusable water bottle instead of using bottled water, or if you have a friend who does drink bottled water, steal their bottle when they're done with it. Refill and reuse that one until it starts to smell bad.

6. Use stuff for as long as you can instead of buying a new one. We don't wear out our clothes in a single school year (though there are some exceptions), but at the start of fall everyone goes out and purchases a whole new wardrobe. Is it really necessary? If your clothes/school supplies/cell phones/whatever are still good, keep using them.

7. Summers coming up, which means everyone starts blasting the air conditioning. Let the house be a little warmer than is comfortable. Turn of the air on breezy days and open up the windows. The opposite goes for winter; put on a sweatshirt instead of cranking the heat.

8. Bike or walk to places within a distance that you are capable of traveling. Invest in a bike chain and avoid burning up the nonrenewable fossil fuels. Not only is it good for the earth, but you'll also find yourself in great shape! If the distance is far, but you know someone nearby going near where you're going, carpool.

9. Eat less meat! When you eat a steak, you consume not only the cow, but everything that had to be fed the cow as it grew up. The resources you consume when you consume meat are huge when you consider not only the grain and water, but also the transporting of the animal and emissions that come from its processing. Granted plant products must be transfered and processed as well, but less so than meat. Eating mostly plant products is being a direct consumer, especially if you grow your own veggies in your back yard.

10. The most obvious one: Recycle, please. It seems like such a simple thing, and yet so few actually do it. If you don't want to pay for the recyclables pick-up, take them to sites. Libraries and schools always have dumpster-shaped containers for paper, and grocery stores often have ones for cans and bottles.