YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO REDUCE GLOBAL-WARMING, POLLUTION AND CO₂ EMISSIONS FOR GREENER EARTH

Avoid meat.

Eating less meat is healthier for you and the planet. Meat consumption has been linked to a variety of health conditions, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. Meat production is a hugely inefficient use of land, water and energy. It takes about 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, and the area of land needed to feed a meat eater could feed 10 or more vegetarians.

Buy in season.

These days there are few foods you can’t find in a supermarket year-round. As a consequence, few of us pause to consider whether the food we eat makes sense given the time of year. Eating out-of-season food is an easy way to rack up a huge carbon footprint—either it’s been transported from far away or it’s been grown in an energy-intensive climate-controlled structure. Avoid foods that aren’t in season.

Canning and freezing are time-honored methods of preserving seasonal foods for later enjoyment. Just remember to check where the food came from, and that canning and freezing also take energy.

Buy local food.

Domestically produced food travels an average of 1,500 miles between the farm and the table. Enormous amounts of fossil fuels are consumed to transport food these great distances. Food grown and raised in your own community is fresher — and often better for the environment — because it didn’t travel hundreds of miles and several days to get to you.

It’s important to remember that local food doesn’t always have a smaller carbon footprint. Growing lettuce in Vermont in January might take more energy than growing it in California and trucking it across country. Meat products in particular can have deceptive carbon footprints—a grass-fed lamb chop from far away might be better than one from the feedlot down the road. Nevertheless, when you buy locally produced food you can be sure that you’re supporting your community.

Buy recycled products.

Turning discarded and collected materials into new products saves vast amounts of energy and virgin resources. Every time we purchase a recycled product we are helping to reduce manufacturing-related energy consumption and greenhouse gases.

Buy reusable goods.

Whenever you shop, look for items that can be used more than once— plastic instead of paper plates, sponges instead of paper towels. One sponge can last as long as 17 rolls of paper towels! That means you could save as much as $33 not buying towels before throwing the sponge away. (When your sponge starts to smell, you can wash it with the dishes right in the dishwasher.)

Drink tap water.

The EPA’s standards for tap water are stricter than the FDA’s bottled water standards—in fact lots of bottled water is just municipal tap water in a bottle. Yet in in 2007 Americans drank 8.8 billion gallons of bottled water. Just manufacturing the plastic bottles for all that water produced over 2.7 million tons of CO₂. That’s equivalent to six months of emissions from an average coal power plant. If we all drank half as much bottled water as we do, the emissions reductions would be equivalent to taking 225,000 cars off the road.

Sign up for online banking and billpay.

Ponder for a moment the number of receipts, bills, banks statements, and other finance-related papers you accumulate over the course of a year. Between producing and shipping the paper, printing the statements, mailing them to you, and your writing checks to mail back, it all adds up to a lot of trees, time, and carbon. You can help reduce the hassle and impact by signing up for paperless billing and banking. Also, avoid taking receipts if you don’t need one (say at the gas pump).]

Print double-sided.

Printing on both sides of the page is an easy way to cut your paper use in half. Set the default printing mode to “duplex”—most office and an increasing number of home printers include this feature. If yours doesn’t, you can print just the odd-numbered pages (this is an option in Word), flip the papers over, and then print the even-numbered pages. Remember to recycle any documents you’re finished with.

Read the news online.

There’s undeniably something special about unfolding the newspaper over your morning coffee. Unfortunately, printing that newspaper and delivering it to your door has a significant environmental impact. Newspapers contain more recycled fiber than ever before, but making the paper for them still consumes almost 12 million tons of wood and emits 20 million tons of CO2 each year. You can get the exact same news online at a tiny fraction of the impact.

There’s undeniably something special about unfolding the newspaper over your morning coffee. Unfortunately, printing that newspaper and delivering it to your door has a significant environmental impact. Newspapers contain more recycled fiber than ever before, but making the paper for them still consumes almost 12 million tons of wood and emits 20 million tons of CO2 each year. You can get the exact same news online at a tiny fraction of the impact.

Recycle aluminum cans.

Manufacturing new aluminum takes lots of energy and emits CO₂. Twenty recycled aluminum cans can be made with the energy it takes to make a single new one.

Recycle your used sports shoes.

Nike allows you to donate old sports shoes (of any brand) for recycling. The shoes are ground up and turned into Nike Grind, which is then used to make playground and sport surfaces around the world.

Reuse old newspapers. Then recycle them.

it’s always better to reuse a product before recycling it. Here are a few ways to get a little more life out of newspapers. It’s still ok to recycle the paper after any of these.

Reuse old one-sided documents.

Most offices and universities have lots of old one-sided documents that no-one wants. And even if you’ve set your printer to print double-sided, any document with an odd number of pages will leave one with a blank back.

Support companies with a climate commitment.

Whenever you shop, consider whether the companies you buy from are helping or hurting the planet. A handy guide is www.climatecounts.org, which rates large corporations on 22 criteria for climate action. From Motorola to Nike you can see which companies are taking small steps to reduce their corporate footprint and which are taking bigger strides to support local, state and federal legislation on climate

Stop junk mail.

The average American receives about 40 pounds of junk mail a year. Just making all that paper produces 10,000 tons of CO₂. Save yourself time and help save the environment by removing yourself from junk mail lists.

Wrap creatively.

Ø Giving gifts is great, but gift wrap isn’t. Most gift wrap is never reused or recycled—in fact many recycling programs do not accept glittered or shiny foil paper because of the high metal content. Instead of using gift wrap, try one of these alternatives or come up with your own!

Ø Use and reuse any wrapping paper you already have. If you’re careful when unwrapping presents (try using a knife to cut any tape) the paper can be reused almost indefinitely. Just store it with the holiday decorations.

Ø Secure your wrapping paper with ribbon, yarn, or twine rather than tape. This makes reusing the paper even easier. For extra points and style, use the shiny black tape from an old VHS cassette.

Ø Instead of buying wrapping paper, use colorful newspaper, magazines, old maps, or calendars. Again, reuse the paper when you’re done and then recycle it.

Ø Hide gifts in bags. Decorating brown paper bags with markers can be a fun project for kids.

Ø Wrap small gifts in a cloth. Drape large gifts with a sheet, or just tie on a ribbon.

Ø Use other gifts as wrapping. Wrap a pan with a kitchen towel or hide a book in a shirt.

Ø Give a gift that doesn’t need wrapping at all—breakfast in bed, a massage, a hiking or camping trip… the possibilities are endless.