The Easiest Ways to Go Green – Get Started with these Simple Steps!

Stop Idling
Every moment you spend idling your car’s engine means needlessly wasting gas, as well as rougher wear on your vehicle. Idling for more than 10 seconds wastes more gas than is needed for startup. Overall, Americans idle away 2.9 billion gallons of gas a year, worth around $78.2 billion.

Turn Off Your Computer
Save energy and wear and tear on your hardware by shutting down your computer at night. You’ll save an average of $90 of electricity a year. The Department of Energy recommends shutting off your monitor if you aren’t going to use it for more than 20 minutes, and the whole system if you’re not going to use it for more than two hours.

Make the Switch to Energy-Saving Bulbs (Source: Environmental Defense Fund (www.edf.org)
Energy efficient light bulbs now dim and fit any fixtures. Today, we can do better. Energy-saving compact fluorescents (CFs) now rival the cozy, warm light of traditional bulbs.

They use a fraction of the electricity, which means lower electricity bills and millions of tons less global warming pollution. And in the summer, because they don’t burn as hot as incandescent bulbs, they’ll lower your cooling bills.
If every household replaced just three 60-watt incandescent bulbs with efficient bulbs, the pollution savings would be like taking 3.5 million cars off the road!

Wash Your Laundry in Cold Water
An easy way to clean green is to turn the dial on your washing machine to cold. Most loads don’t need hot water, and 90% of the energy used by washing machines goes into heating. The higher the water temperature, the higher the cost to you and the planet.

Pay Bills Online
Save natural resources — as well as late fees — by enrolling in online bill-paying options. Paperless billing not only saves trees, it also eliminates the fossil fuel needed to get all those billing envelopes from them to you and back again. Plus, you’ll save money on stamps.

Jettison Junk Mail
Around 100 million trees and 28 billion gallons of water are used to send junk mail to Americans every year, according to greendimes.com. You can stop 75% of unsolicited mail by registering on the Mail Preference Service on the Direct Marketing Association Website (for a fee of $1). Within 90 days, most unsolicited mail will stop.

Print on Two Sides
Know what? It’s not that hard to print on both sides of the paper. But even though most software programs give that option, most of us still print only on one side of the page. Consider this: the U.S. alone uses 4 million tons of copy paper annually, about 27 pounds per person. Save dough and your local landfill. Print on two sides.

Carpool It!
If your drive to work is 25 miles each way and at least half is in typical stop-and-go traffic, you’ll save almost 10 percent of your monthly carbon emissions by carpooling. Not to mention the gas dollars you’ll save and the fun you’ll have sharing office gossip with your friends.

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The Easiest Ways to Go Green – Get Started with these Simple Steps!