Go Green

<p> <span class="c1"><strong>Say No to Paper or Plastic</strong></span><br /> <br /> You don&#39;t have to wait till grocery bags are <a href="http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/tips/1516">banned</a>: Say no to plastic or paper ones now. Instead, bring your own reusable shopping bags. Consider an entire set of reusable, double-handled hemp bags that work great for a large order, and reusable organic cotton mesh bags for your fruits and vegetables. </p> <p> For trips to the mall, opt for one of the new, eco-chic bags from sources such as <a href="http://www.reusablebags.com/">Reusablebags</a>. These funky, graphically inspired totes and messenger bags are crafted from unlikely materials such as rice and sewn by hand in small batches in Cambodia. <a href="http://www.ecobag.com/">EcoBags</a>, another source, carries totes made from recycled cotton, as well as a recycled cotton lunch sack to replace the brown bag or Ziploc. </p> <p> Or better yet, buy a <a href="http://www.feedprojects.org/">FEED</a> bag and support a project started by Lauren Bush, an honorary spokesperson for the UN World Food Program. Proceeds from the sale go to feed a child for a school year. The goal: Reduce the billions of plastic and paper bags headed for a landfill near you with a smarter answer. </p>

<p> <img class="imgBorder" src="http://www.thedailygreen.com/cm/thedailygreen/images/pitcher-fridge-tipjpg-med.jpg" /><br /> Such a simple action as filling a container of water from the tap and placing it in your refrigerator provides several benefits in terms of energy and water savings, as well as your health. </p> <p> For one thing, a pitcher full of water will help your refrigerator keep your food cool <a href="http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/tips/3918">more efficiently</a>, much like how a cold ice pack works in a cooler. Also, whenever you want a glass of water, you won&#39;t have to let the tap run for a few moments to obtain a cool temperature, cutting down on waste. You won&#39;t need as much ice, which requires energy to make. </p> <p> Having cold water at the ready will discourage you from reaching for disposable <a href="http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/tips/1935">plastic water bottles</a>, which have a sizable environmental footprint to produce, ship and store. </p> <p> You&#39;ll also be likely to drink more water, keeping hydrated while avoiding sugar-loaded sodas and other alternatives. Plus, when tap water sits for a while (particularly when uncovered), much of the chlorine that is present from the filtration plant evaporates out. This means you&#39;re enjoying a tastier drink, and cutting down on the toxins, extremely dilute though they may be, that enter your body. Doesn&#39;t that sound refreshing? </p>

<p> It is that tiime of the year when our windows get pounded with sunlight and thet heat gets transferred to inside of the buildings. So make sure that you have sunscreens on windows that are getting direct exposure to sun. It will save you a lot of money in electric bills and reduce your carbon footprint. </p>

<div> <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://img.timeinc.net/toh/images/portals/gogreen.jpg&amp;imgrefurl=http://www.hugg.com/taxonomy/term/215&amp;h=448&amp;w=390&amp;sz=21&amp;hl=en&amp;start=1&amp;um=1&amp;tbnid=xEbt0DfSpFO7FM:&amp;tbnh=127&amp;tbnw=111&amp;prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgo%2Bgreen%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4SUNA_enUS223US224%26sa%3DN"><img src="http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:xEbt0DfSpFO7FM:http://img.timeinc.net/toh/images/portals/gogreen.jpg" /></a><br /> </div> <div> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Get regular tune-ups</strong> </div>Make sure to replace dirty air filters and get regular oil changes with the recommended grade of oil (be sure the old oil is recycled!). You could improve fuel economy 10% or more.<br /> <br /> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Lighten the load</strong> </div>Extra-important when planning a vacation: Carrying around an extra 100 pounds reduces fuel economy by about 1-2% The reduction is based on the percentage of extra weight relative to the vehicle&#39;s weight and affects smaller vehicles more than larger ones.<br /> <br /> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Watch where you park</strong> </div>Park in a garage or in the shade to keep your car cool in the summer. Use a windshield shade if parking outdoors Physics lesson: As the temperature rises, gasoline expands, meaning you get less energy per gallon, and therefore fewer miles per gallon. A cool car will help you get the most out of a tank. Plus, when you suit down in a cool car, you&#39;re less apt to crank the air conditioner, which can reduce fuel economy as much as 12%.<br /> <br /> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Check your gas cap</strong> </div>According to some estimates, a surprising 10-17% of cars on the road have broken or missing gas caps. A new one usually costs about $15. A faulty gas cap allows gas to evaporate, which not only means you&#39;re buying gas that you won&#39;t use, but also contributes to air pollution, particularly smog. One study in Kansas found a leaky gas cap can be responsible for 175 pounds of air pollution (not counting carbon) in a year. That means more smog, which triggers asthma attacks.<br /> <br /> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Check tire pressure and get tires aligned</strong> </div>Keeping tires properly inflated can improve fuel efficiency by 3% or more. An estimated one in four vehicles has tires that are out of alignment. Tires out of alignment can reduce fuel economy by as much as 10%.<br /> <br /> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Keep track when fueling up</strong> </div>Check your own fuel economy when you fill up. Use a little notebook: divide miles driven since last fuel-up by gallons pumped. If you see it slipping, you can identify problems early. If you make the same commute each day, but get better gas mileage one week over the next, it means you&#39;re burning more gas to drive the same route. That&#39;s means more oil pumped, refined and burned, producing pollution at each step of the way. At the gas station, divide miles driven/by gallons pumped for MPG.<br /> <br /> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Don&#39;t speed &amp; Drive smoothly</strong> </div>Follow the speed limit. A rule of thumb is every 5 mph costs your fuel economy about 7%. Avoid &quot;jack rabbit&quot; starts, aggressive driving and tire-squealing stops. Gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph. Assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas. You can improve fuel economy up to one-third by reforming some bad habits, like riding the brake, coming to squealing stops and accelerating like a racecar driver.<br /> <br /> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Don&#39;t idle get going</strong> </div>Don&#39;t &quot;warm up&quot; your car in the wintertime. It doesn&#39;t need more than 30 seconds, and just wastes gas. Also, avoid idling - particularly in and around schools or other places where children congregate. Idling allows pollution that contributes to smog (which can trigger asthma attacks) to accumulate right around the car. Imagine a school parking lot full of idling SUVs and school buses! And it&#39;s pollution that serves no purpose - you get 0 mpg burning that fuel.<br /> <br /> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Use public transportation</strong> </div>Whenever it is available use the train or bus, and take the subway. The public transportation system in the United States saves 3.4 billion gallons of oil a year, eliminates 541 million hours of traffic delays and cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 26 million tons. As an example, the average Manhattan resident, who has access to subways, buses and sidewalks, produces about one-third as much greenhouse gas pollution as the national average.<br /> <span class="c2"><strong><br /></strong></span> <div class="subhead c1"> <strong>Buy a fuel-efficient vehicle</strong> </div>If buying a new car, buy a fuel-efficient vehicle. A car that gets 35 mpg will use half as much fuel to go as far as the SUV that gets 17 mpg. An average driver will pay about $900 to drive a 2008 Toyota Prius hybrid for a year, whereas a 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee will cost more than $4,300.<br /> <b><a href="http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/fuel-efficient-vehicles-47021501?click=main_sr">Check out this list of the ten most fuel-efficient 2008 vehicles!</a></b><br /> </div>

<div class="subhead"> BOTTLED WATER<br /> <b>TIP:</b> A perfect example of this is bottled water - Americans currently spend $15 billion a year on bottled water and the amount of oil required to make the plastic bottles is the equivalent to the amount of oil required to run 100,000 cars for a year.<br /> <b>ACTION &amp; EFFECT:</b> Simply by eliminating 1 bottle of water per day, people will save $500 per year and help reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills and waterways (96 percent of water bottles sold in 2006 were in single-size containers, which have a lower recycling rate than nearly any other form of plastic packaging.<br /> <br /> </div> <div class="subhead"> GET RID OF JUNK MAIL<br /> <b>TIP:</b> Let&#39;s face it, in America shopping is a leisure activity and we don&#39;t even have to leave our homes to play: Every day, catalogs and junk mail fill our mailboxes with temptations to buy things we don&#39;t need. In 2006, we bought $160 billion in merchandise from catalogs. And more than 8 million tons of trees are used to produce the 19 billion catalogs printed each year, requiring enough energy to power 1.2 million homes for a year and producing as many emissions as 2 million cars. As for junk mail, the average adult is on at least 50 mailing lists and receives 40 pounds of junk mail a year-nearly half of which ends up in landfills unopened.<br /> <b>ACTION &amp; EFFECT:</b> Cut down on junk mail by calling 888-5OPTOUT and cancel your catalog subscriptions by going to <a href="http://www.abacus-us.com" rel="nofollow">www.abacus-us.com</a> and clicking on &quot;Consumer Opt-out&quot; to save $1,413 a year on unnecessary catalog purchases, helping us to collectively save 100 million trees a year.<br /> <br /> </div> <div class="subhead"> GET RID OF A CAR<br /> <b>TIP:</b> This may sound controversial or difficult, but the fastest way to cut your family&#39;s expenses is to get rid of one of the family cars. Consider this: there are roughly two cars on the road for each household in the U.S., and the average annual cost of each of those cars-factoring in gas, insurance, maintenance, parking and so on-is $8,580 per year. So do the math: if your household income is $50,000 per year and you have two cars, you are working 4 months of the year just to pay for them.<br /> <b>ACTION &amp; EFFECT:</b> If you live in one of the 48 cities in the U.S. where Zip Car operates-which allows you to reserve a car for 6 2-hour slots and 2 4-hour slots each week for just $162 per month-ditch one or both of your cars and save up to $8,580 each year while keeping 3,640 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air.<br /> <br /> </div> <div class="subhead"> BRING YOUR LUNCH TO WORK<br /> <b>TIP:</b> Today, Americans spend over $134 billion each year on fast food. While it&#39;s convenient, it&#39;s not always cheap or healthy. And takeout food packaging creates 1.8 million tons of trash in the U.S. each year, representing a huge waste of resources. Let&#39;s say you spend $9 a day on a chicken sandwich and soda at your local Subway outlet. That&#39;s $45 a week, or $2,250 every year. If you instead saved that amount and invested it, in 20 years you&#39;d have more than $111,000.<br /> <b>ACTION &amp; EFFECT:</b> Save $2,250 per year by &quot;brown-bagging&quot; your lunch and help us to collectively reduce our landfills by 1.8 million tons of trash.<br /> <br /> </div> <div class="subhead"> GREEN YOUR NEST EGG<br /> <b>TIP:</b> With the current mortgage and credit crises, people are understandably nervous about investing in the stock market. But in the long run, investing in the stock market can make you rich and the good news is that the emerging &quot;Green Economy&quot; represents the greatest single investment opportunity of the 21st Century-as big or even bigger than the technology boom of the 1980s and 1990s. Catch the new &quot;Green Wave&quot; of investing by investing a portion of your savings in an SRI (Socially Responsible Investment), like a socially responsible mutual fund or an SRI exchange-traded fund. Today, it is possible to invest in Socially Responsible Index Funds that screen out companies whose practices are harmful to the environment or are otherwise socially and ethically irresponsible and screen in companies whose practices promote sustainability and benefit the environment-like clean energy and renewable energy companies or natural food companies. A number of &quot;Green&quot; mutual funds and exchange-traded funds have outperformed the S&amp;P 500 over the past few years, and many more such funds are becoming available.<br /> <b>ACTION &amp; EFFECT:</b> &quot;Pay yourself first&quot; by investing the maximum amount allowed by law in your 401K plan or IRA, and allocate a portion of your savings for investment in a &quot;Green&quot; Index fund, mutual fund, or ETF. If your plan administrator does not have any &quot;green&quot; funds to offer, express your interest in having an SRI or green fund added to your menu of choices. Check out the <a href="http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenavista/regisandkelly/special/greenweek08/#greenmutual">Green mutual funds</a><br /> </div> <div class="subhead"> BUY IN BULK<br /> <b>TIP:</b> Buying in bulk doesn&#39;t mean buying large quantities of things you don&#39;t need simply because you couldn&#39;t resist the bargain. Buying in bulk does mean buying the largest size of products you were going to buy anyway both to save money (items typically cost significantly less by weight when purchased in bulk v. single-size/small packages) and to reduce your consumption of packaging/containers-which make up more than 31 percent of all municipal solid waste.<br /> <b>ACTION &amp; EFFECT:</b> Save up to one-third on your grocery bill by shopping in bulk while reducing the 80 million tons of packaging that ends up in landfills each year.<br /> <br /> </div> <div class="subhead"> CLEAN IT GREEN<br /> <b>TIP:</b> The average U.S. household spends $600 per year on about 40 pounds of chemical cleaning supplies-and it is a huge irony that many of the products we use to clean our homes are a source of poisonous chemicals-toxins that may cause cancer, asthma, or other medical problems. Chemical cleaning supplies are an $18 billion annual business, and they not only threaten our health but also end up in our rivers, soil, air, and oceans.<br /> <b>ACTION &amp; EFFECT:</b> Save $580 per year by making your own non-toxic household cleaning products and spare the environment 40 pounds of toxic chemicals. You can find recipes for making your own non-toxic cleaning products using everyday items like baking soda, vinegar, and soda water at <a href="javascript:GOurl(&#39;www.greenpeace.org/usa&#39;)">www.greenpeace.org/usa</a>.<br /> <br /> </div> <div class="subhead"> PLANT TREES &amp; SHRUBS TO SAVE ON ENERGY COSTS<br /> <b>TIP:</b> Strategically planting trees and shrubs to shade your home and keep your home naturally cooler in summer can save you between $150 and $250 on energy costs per year-while also providing food and housing for birds, protecting against erosion, and cleaning the air as the plants soak up carbon dioxide.<br /> <b>ACTION &amp; EFFECT:</b> Start planting practically for free by purchasing an annual membership for $15 to The Arbor Day Foundation, which offers ten free shade trees for each membership-and save $177 on annual energy costs while reducing your home&#39;s CO2 emissions by 3,952 pounds per year.<br /> <br /> </div> <div class="subhead"> SKIP UNNECESSARY CAR TRIPS<br /> <b>TIP:</b> 40 percent of all car trips made in the U.S. are less than 2 miles long-a distance that could, in many case, be covered by bicycle or on foot. Also, an astonishing 91 percent of Americans commute to work alone in their car, averaging 30-miles per round trip. If every person in the U.S. commuted by carpool just one day a week or took public transportation instead of driving, we&#39;d reduce carbon emissions by 149 million tons.<br /> <b>ACTION &amp; EFFECT:</b> Save $215 a year by carpooling to work just one day a week and help us to collectively reduce 149 million tons of carbon emissions. </div>