Earth Day: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Reduce your use:

• Reduce your use of oil: Walk, ride a bike or take a city bus whenever possible.
• Reduce your use of paper towels and napkins. i.e. Use cloth napkins
• Reduce your use of plastic drink containers--water bottles and polystyrene cups. Use your own reusable coffee mug or water bottle at home, at work or on the go whenever possible..
• Reduce your use of electricity: Unplug all home appliances that do not need to run full time (as refrigerators and freezers do of course) as more than half of the energy appliances use is consumed while they are turned off tho still plugged in and kept in a ready state. Besides entertainment electronics this applies to toasters, blenders, coffee makers, microwaves, curling irons, hair dryers, can openers, lamps and more. Alternatively, use a surge protector strip for multiple appliances and turn them all off via the strip's switch.
• Reduce your time in the shower: Every 2 minutes uses 10 gallons of water. Reduce the water use more by installing a low flow shower head. Also don't run the water in the sink the entire time you are shaving.
• Reduce Junk Mail: Remove your name from junk mail mailing lists and save some of the 100 million trees per year currently dedicated to this practice. Start here.
• Lower your theromstat in winter and raise it in summer. i.e. use less heat in winter and less air conditioning in summer.
• Replace one or more incandescent light bulbs with CFL (Compact Florescent Lamp) bulbs and save up to $30 over the life of the bulb in the savings generated by its 70% less energy use and its typically 10 times longer life span.
• Buy organic foods. Organic means grown without herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, steroids, is not genetically modified and is not irradiated. Healthier for you and for the earth.
• Recycle! And buy products made with recycled elements--paper, plastics, glass, metals etc.
  

Reuse:

• If you have a garden, compost your organic garbage.
• Use reusable cloth shopping bags. Keep some of the billions of plastic bags that take 10K+ years to degrade out of the landfills and save some of the 100 thousand plus of trees made into shopping bags each year.
• Use your local library. Donate books, DVD, CD to your library.
• Use cloth napkins and dishrags.

Recycle! And buy products made with recycled elements--paper, plastics, glass, metals etc.

Where to recycle:

• Appliances
  
• Business clothing
  
• Cell phones and rechargeable batteries
  
• Carpets
  
• Computers
  
• Eyeglasses
• Electronics
  
• Formal dresses
  
• Floppy disks and videotapes
  
• Packing peanuts
  
• Paint
  
• Tires