Eat Locally!
Buying local food not only helps local farmers thrive, it reduces energy consumption. Estimates on how long the average food travels from pasture to plate range from 1,200 to 2,500 miles. A lot of energy is expended freezing, refrigerating, and trucking that food around. Eating locally grown food means less fossil fuel burned in preparation and transport. Local food is often safer, too. Even when it’s not organic, small farms tend to be less aggressive than large factory farms about dousing their wares with chemicals.
- Visit your local farmer’s market or co-op.
- Many grocery stores label from where the fruits, vegetables, meats, fishes, and other fresh stuff comes from. Make a point to buy local.
- Try going to locally owned coffee shops and restaurants. They tend to make more of an effort to support local business than the larger chains.
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Downshift your driving!
As gas prices go up, downshifting our driving doesn’t just make sense environmentally, but it will also helps our wallets. A quarter of the trips Americans take by car are within walking distance, and each gallon of gas that we use equals 20 pounds of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Every year, Americans are driving more and more, as exemplified by kids’ commutes to school. “Forty years ago, half of all students walked or bicycled to the schoolhouse. Today, that number has dropped to 15 percent, while 60 percent of youths are toted in a car.” (NY Times)
- Take public transportation if it’s available to you.
- Carpool to work, school, evenings out, even to do errands. You’ll save on gas, be able to use HOV lanes, and be more social!
- Try doing more things that don’t require driving. Invite your neighbors over for a bbq or movie night. Walk to the neighborhood coffee shop or bar.
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Junk your junk mail!
The average American receives 41 pounds of junk mail every year. That junk mail comes from more than 100 million trees, which is the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months. In 2005, 5.8 million tons of catalogs and other direct mailings ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream – enough to fill over 450,000 garbage trucks. Less than 36 percent of this junk mail was recycled. The production and disposal of direct mail consumes more energy than 3 million cars. And besides all of the environmental reasons for why junk mail is terrible, it’s a complete nuisance!
- Check out our newly organized list of tips to manually get rid of your junk mail.
- Consider using a paid service such as 41pounds.org, which does the work of getting rid of 80 to 95 percent of your junk mail for you (and gives a donation to New American Dream!).
- Recycle what junk mail you do receive instead of letting it end up in the trash. That junk mail could end up turning into something great in the end!
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Break the bottled water habit!
In 2004, the U.S. consumed 17 percent of the world’s bottled water—more than any other country—at almost 7 billion gallons. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 cars for a year. Eighty-six percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States aren’t recycled. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals. Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. Moreover, while the demand for bottled water is up in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency had found that 90 percent of tap water domestically is safe to drink. Furthermore, studies show that at least 40 percent of bottled water is just tap water!
- If you don’t feel comfortable drinking your tap water, consider installing a filter on your faucet or getting a filtered pitcher you can keep in your fridge.
- For water on the go, invest in a safe, reusable bottle. Reusing a disposable water or soda bottle is actually unsafe, as the plastic will begin leaking toxins into your beverage after a short period of time or due to temperature changes.
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Beat the Heat, Wash in Cold!
A whopping 90 percent of the energy used by a washing machine goes to just heating the water. You could save $60 or more on your annual energy spending by washing at least four out of every five loads in cold water! And you could reduce your CO2 emissions by 72 pounds in just one month by doing so! Washing in hot water is more likely to clean out your wallet than your apparel. Today’s more efficient clothes washers and laundry detergents make it possible to get even whites clean in cold water.
- Wash at least four out of five loads of laundry in cold water—you’ll save your clothes from quick wear and your money too!
- Be sure to tell your friends too because these actions can really add up: if every household in the U.S. makes the switch to cold water for four out of five loads, together we'll save $6.7 BILLION per year and keep nearly 50 million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere – the equivalent of removing 10 million cars from the road!
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Bring Your Own Bag!
Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest. Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million plastic bags used per minute. Billions end up as litter each year. According to the EPA, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the U.S. each year. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion.) Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales, and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.
- Take reusable bags to the grocery store whenever possible. Check out our Conscious Consumer Marketplace for suggestions on where to get some eco-friendly bags, though many stores are selling inexpensive canvas bags right at the check-out line. After using them, try remembering to take them out to your car or back into your backpack so the next time out the door so you’ll always have the bags around!
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