Source:  The Green Book – The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet, One Simple Step at a Time – written by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen

• Keep your fireplace damper closed unless a fire is going.  An open damper can let 8 percent of the heat in your home escape.  In the summer, cool air escapes.  That can add up to $100 a year – up the chimney
  
• Recycle your paper clips, or just reuse the one you have!  Enough paper clips are produced each year to hand every person in the world at least three.  For every one hundred thousand paper clips produced, only twenty thousand are used to hold together paper.  The rest aren’t being used. 
  
• Use leftover paper or plastic bags as liners for your trash cans.  You’ll save money and time shopping in the trash-liner aisle.  The average cost of twenty kitchen trash bags is $5.00. Plus, when one ton of plastic bags are reused, the energy equivalent of eleven barrels of oil is saved.  When one ton of paper bags are reused, up to seventeen trees are spared. 
  
• Use the right sized pot on your stove burners.  You could save about $36.00 annually for an electric range, or $18.00 for a gas range.  Five percent of the energy bought and used per person in the United States is for preparing and cooking food.  Over a year, this exceeds twice the energy a person in Africa uses to power everything in his or her life.
  

• Instead of using plastic storage containers, store your food in glass or porcelain containers.  Fewer chemicals will likely leach from the container into the food.  Chemicals that transfer from plastic to food and from food to body may cause health risks. 
  

• Keep your microwave clean and you’ll be able to maximize its energy.  This means less electricity used, less money spent, and less time cooking.  Microwaves are between 3.5 and 4.8 times more energy efficient that traditional electric ovens.  If it costs ten cents to cook one item in a microwave, it would cost forty-eight cents to cook the same item in a standard oven.  If everyone in North America cooked exclusively with a microwave for a year, we’d save as much energy as the entire continent of Africa consumes during that same time.
  

• Rid yourself of junk mail-or at least recycle it.  The average US household receives 1.5 trees’ worth of junk mail each year, and many of these trees are thrown right into the trash.  If you want to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive, you can register with one of several different organizations. (check online for websites)  For the junk mail you continue to receive, remember to toss it in the recycling bin instead of throwing it out with the garbage.  You can even recycle the plastic window envelopes.  If all Americans recycled their junk mail, $370 million in landfill dumping fees could be saved each year. 
  Dispose of your gum in the trash, not on the ground (or under your desk). The average American chews up to 190 sticks of gum each year.  In all, those 57 billion sticks could add up to a gum patch four miles wide and six miles long. 

• Close the curtains when it is sunny in the summer and when it is cold in the winter, and you can reduce your energy needs by up to 25%.  If every house in America kept the curtains closed for additional insulation, the total energy saved annually would be as much as the entire nation of Japan uses in a year.
   
• Clean you dryer lint screen, and don’t overload the dryer.  You’ll save up to 5 percent on your electricity bill.  If everyone did it, we’d save the energy equivalent of 350 million gallons of gasoline per year.  Better yet…use a clothesline when possible! 
  
• If you must use dry cleaners, try to go less frequently.  You will not only save on drive time and fuel, you’ll save plastic.  Dry cleaners bunch items together in plastic garment bags, so the more items you bring at once, the better.  If one in ten households took one less trip to the dry cleaners per year, and saved two plastic garment bags, the plastic saved could be stitched together to make more than nine thousand hot air balloons.  Better yet… Request no plastic garment bags, and return your hangers to the dry cleaner for recycling.  You can also try eco-friendly dry cleaners, or wet cleaners (which use biodegradable soap). 
  

• Wrap your water heaters in an insulating blanket to store heat.  Then set the thermostat no higher than 120 degrees to conserve energy.  You could save 25 percent of the energy used in your home by making these changes.  If everyone did this, US households would save more than $32 billion per year in energy costs. 
  

• For flowerbeds and gardens, use drip irrigation or soaker hoses instead of regular sprinklers.  You can save up to 70 percent of the water you would typically use because evaporation will be minimal and only the base of the plants will be receiving water opposed to the leaves and foliage. 
  

• Cut your grass so it is two inches high, and leave the clippings on the lawn.  You’ll spend less time mowing and raking, and you won’t have to water your lawn as much.  Forty percent of water in summer is allocated to outdoor usage when the rates are highest.  Also, less lawn care usually means using fewer chemicals that will leach into runoff water and damage local fish and bird habitats.
  

• Try to use your sprinklers in early morning or evening.  The average lawn needs only about one hour of watering per week.  In summer, outdoor water usage accounts for 40 percent of household water bills.  The irrigation of US lawns and landscapes claims an estimated 7.9 billion gallons of water a day. 
  

• If you subscribe to your favorite magazines instead of buying them from a newsstand, you’ll get the convenience of delivery and will save 75 percent or more off the newsstand price.  Sixty percent of most magazines at the newsstand are not sold and have to be hauled off to the trash dump – a waste of time, money and energy. 

• Avoid using plastic liners (you don’t really need them) with your shower curtains, and you will keep unnatural vinyl plastics out of the landfills.  PVC plastic waste amounts to 1.23 million tons per year, and none of it is recyclable. 

• Use a digital camera instead of one that uses film. Some 686 million rolls of film are processed each year, and the solutions used to make the prints often contain hazardous chemicals that require special treatment and disposal.  Avoid using disposable cameras.  Despite the claim on the box that they’re recycled, more than half end up in the trash. 

• Instead of tying ribbons on your holiday packages this year, garnish them with recyclable paper bows (natural-fiber raffia), dried flowers, or a reusable scarf.  If two out of three households conserved an arm’s length of ribbon, the amount saved could tie a bow around the earth!  

• Cut back on wrapping waste by placing gifts in reusable bags or baskets.  If you prefer traditional wrapping paper, try to find a brand with recycled content and then reuse any large pieces to wrap presents again next year.  Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, Americans produce an extra two billion pounds of garbage per week, much of which is gift packaging.  If 40 percent of US households reduced their holiday paper consumption by just two sheets this year, the savings could gift-wrap Manhattan Island.  

• Purchase greeting cards made from recycled or tree-free materials.  Americans send two billion holiday cards each year, so just 1 percent reduction could save fifteen thousand trees! 

• Recycle:  Every ten aluminum or steel cans recycled saves 4 pounds of carbon, and every ten glass bottles recycled saves three pounds of carbon.  If you recycle newspapers, you could save fifty pounds of carbon per year.  

• Don’t ask for ATM receipts.  If everyone in the United States refused their receipts, it would save a roll of paper more than two billion feet long, or enough to circle the equator fifteen times!

• Get a voice-mail service for you home phone.  If all answering machines in US homes were replaced by voice-mail services, the annual energy savings would total nearly two billion kilowatt hours.  The resulting reduction in air pollution would be equivalent to removing 250,000 cars from the road for a year! 

• Turn down your thermostat at night.  For each degree, you save about 1 percent on your heating costs and carbon emissions.  If you turn down the heat in your home overnight or when no one is home – for argument’s sake, half the day  - by ten degrees, you can save 10 percent!

• Request automatic deposits for your paychecks.  Not only will you get your money faster, but you will reduce the time and fuel you spend to go to the bank.  More than seven billion checks are written annually that could be replaced by automatic deposits.  If everyone who was eligible for an automatic deposit opted for it, it would save about $65 billion dollars in fuel costs and lost time expense-and enough paper checks for everyone in the world. 

• Use bars of soap versus liquid wash.  It’s less expensive and it saves packaging waste.  The average bar of soap lasts for about twenty showers, whereas a 16-ounce bottle of body wash lasts for an average of 80 showers.  But body wash costs on average more than four times as much as soap.  If every US household replaced a bottle of body wash with a bar of soap, roughly 2.5 million pounds of plastic containers could be diverted from the waste stream. 

• Run full loads in your dishwasher and save energy, and don’t pre-rinse your dishes before putting them in.  Do both and you’ll save up to 20 gallons of water per load, or 7300 gallons over a year.  That’s as much water as the average person drinks in a lifetime.  (If you must hand wash, turn off the tap while you scrub).