The Simple Things:

• Obey the speed limit and drive efficiently. Each gallon of gas saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere
• Check your tires for proper inflation. Properly inflated tires improve gas mileage more than 3%
• Combine automobile trips. One pound of carbon dioxide is saved for every mile you don’t drive
• Buy locally produced foods whenever possible. Since agriculture is responsible for about a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (partly from transportation), you can reduce your emissions simply by watching what you eat.
• Adjust your thermostat lower in winter and higher in summer. For an average home, 2 F° lower in winter and 2 F° higher in summer than usual. saves 2000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
• Complain when you enter a restaurant, theater, or shop that is too cold. Heating and cooling of businesses is a major use of energy and a significant overhead cost for them—tell them to save money!
• Unplug electronics when not in use. Even when turned off, things like hairdryers, cell phone chargers, and televisions use energy.
• Discontinue using the “extra frig” in the garage. The refrigerator must work harder and use more energy, especially in the summer when the garage is hot.
• Wash clothes in cold water. Washing clothes in cold water saves water-heating energy and your clothes will last longer.
• Use the vacation-mode setting on the water heater when leaving home for more than a day.
• Use a solar clothes dryer–an indoor (such as a shower curtain rod) or outdoor clothesline.
• Plant trees. Each tree absorbs 1 ton of carbon over its lifetime, so, along with your community, plant 10 trees a year—1 citizen planting 10 trees = 10 tons of CO₂).
• Remember the 3 Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
• Recycle everything you can.
• Sort recyclables into waste management bins or into “blue bags.”
• Inventory your trash for a week.  Do you find items that you could have avoided buying (Reduce), items that could be used again or for another purpose (Reuse), or items that could be Recycled?
• Pay attention to the purchases you make. How is it packaged? How far did it travel to get to you? Will it have to be replaced and end up in the waste stream? Is it toxic? Ask these questions before you buy.
• Buy items with the least amount of packaging.
• Buy products made from recycled materials. Encourage recycling by being a market for the goods you recycle.
• Use cloth bags for all shopping or refuse a paper or plastic bag if the product can be carried without a bag. Plastic grocery bags are made from petroleum and do not biodegrade in landfill. Paper bags do not degrade rapidly enough to make them a better choice and they are made from virgin wood pulp, not recycled paper.
• Recycle newspaper, white bond paper, and magazines. Buy recycled paper goods. It takes less energy and sacrifices fewer trees to make new paper from recycled paper than to make it from trees. Show that there is a market for all that paper you recycle.
• Use cloth napkins instead of paper.
• Use cloth towels or rags instead of paper towels.
• Reduce junk mail, register at Mail Preference Service.
• Recycle old electronics, cell phones, computers, etc. Sell or donate unused electronics.
• Have one or more meatless days every week. Methane is the second most significant greenhouse gas and cows are one of the greatest methane emitters. Their grassy diet and multiple stomachs cause them to produce methane. The energy and water required to grow a pound of beef is ten times what it takes to grow an equivalent amount of vegetable protein.
• Don’t leave water running while you brush your teeth, shave, or wash dishes. Leaving the water running can waste up to 5 gallons of water every time you brush your teeth!
• Repair leaking faucets or leaking toilets. Leaks, even a small drip, add up rapidly. In one year a leaky toilet can waste more than 22,000 gallons of clean, fresh drinking water.
• Don’t wash produce under running water. Instead, use a container for the water then dump and refill.
• Only run the dishwasher when it is full. Save more energy by not using the heat-dry setting. Instead just open the washer's door a little to allow heat and steam to escape and allow it to sit that way for a while. All the dishes except plastic will dry quickly on their own.
• Take shorter or fewer showers. A 5-minute shower uses about 25 gallons of water, a bath about 50 gallons.
• Use a car wash that recycles its water. If you wash your car in your driveway not only do you use more water, but also the water goes untreated into the storm drains and then to the river.
• Properly dispose of hazardous wastes such as batteries, paint, and unused or empty containers of pesticides. Never discard batteries in the trash. The heavy metals, such as mercury, cadmium, and others leach into ground water or streams. Many local stores such as supermarkets and electronics stores have battery-recycling bins.
• Cook some dishes in a solar cooker in summer. Use non-toxic cleaning products. At Sacramento's latitude of 38° north, we can cook a meal in about 2 hours outdoors in our solar box cookers from April to October.

A Little Less Simple and a Little More Money:

• Replace incandescent bulbs with energy efficient compact fluorescents. They cost a little more but last longer and use 75% less electricity thereby saving you money in two ways—they won’t need to be replaced for years and the monthly electric bill will be smaller.
• Install motion detector light switches indoors and outdoors. The lights come on automatically when someone enters the room and turn off automatically after a period of non-occupancy.
• Install on-demand hot water tank or hot water pump. If your hot water needs are far from the hot water source, consider installing a hot water pump that circulates the water through insulated pipes delivering hot water immediately to where you need it, and then you don’t waste water letting it run down the drain while you wait.
• Install a low-flow showerhead. By aerating the flow, newer low-flow showerheads give you the feel that you are getting a full flow of water delivered.
• Install a “whole house” fan or an attic fan. Venting the attic space, especially at night when the air is cooler, cools the house faster and saves energy.
• Use the Sun to passively reduce your energy footprint. The southern and western exposures of a building are the ones that receive the direct rays of the Sun most of the day. This fact can be used to your advantage if you take measures to encourage the rays in the winter and block them in the summer.
• Cover south and west-facing windows in summer. Uncover south and west-facing windows in winter. Numerous methods are available. Some can be combined for even more improvement: Retractable awnings, solar screens or film, heavy drapes and tree plantings.
• Replace all or part of your lawn with low water-use plants. Keeping a lawn green and free of pest plants and insects takes extreme amounts of water, fertilizer, and pesticides much of it ending up in our waterways. Find out which plants love to grow in your area and cover the former lawn space with them.
• Start a worm farm to process your vegetable scraps or start a compost heap for yard waste. Your vegetable scraps are easily and odorlessly made into compost and rich, dark liquid fertilizer with a tub of worms! Check “vermiculture” on the Internet for instructions and supplies.
• Buy the best quality goods you can afford. Poorly made items end up in the trash and must be replaced sooner than quality goods.

More Commitment and More Money:

• Buy an energy-efficient vehicle next time. Choose your next car carefully. Check the Green Rating for all automobiles not just hybrids.
• Buy energy-efficient appliances. Look for the Energy Star rating on the appliance in the store. Buy a front-loading clothes washing machine. They use much less water and are less destructive to your clothes than top-loading agitator machines.
• Install skylights or solar tubes in interior rooms. These will eliminate the need for daytime lighting in those spaces.
• Subscribe to environmental magazines and join environmental causes and action groups. Talk to people who take positive action for the environment. Encourage each other. Begin with personal change, and then encourage your family to learn about the state of our planet. You can see real change when you involve your community, then the country and the planet will follow.
• Give environmentally friendly gifts to show your commitment to the planet and to encourage the recipients to make changes too. The very best thing any of us can do is to be aware, alert, and curious.

Websites for More Information (small sample):

• American Solar Energy Society connects you to resources and information on installing solar power in your own home www.ases.org/
• Energy Star Program is a government website that provides information for comparing appliances before purchase. www.energystar.gov/products
• Environmental Defense, is dedicated to protecting the environmental rights of all people, guided by scientific evaluation of environmental problems. They work to create solutions that win lasting economic and social support because they are nonpartisan, cost-effective and fair. www.environmentaldefense.org/
• Environmental News Network, ENN, sends out daily updates on environmental issues from all over the world, and it is free to subscribe! www.enn.com
• Green Center at Yahoo.com gives a “green” rating for all cars, new, used, and hybrid. autos.yahoo.com/green_center.
• National Recycling Coalition lists electronic recycling programs by state so you can safely dispose of all your electronics: cell phones, computers, TVs, printers, etc. http://www.nrc-recycle.org/programs.aspx
• Solar Cookers International assists communities worldwide to use the power of the Sun to cook food and pasteurize water for the benefit of people and environments. On their website you can see the work they do and buy solar cooker supplies and plans for making your own cooker. www.solarcookers.org/
• Worm farms check your Internet searcher for “vermiculture” information and supplies to start your own worm farm or compost pile. www.composters.com.
• Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), www.smud.org, has many energy saving tips and includes a link to the SMUD-sponsored site www.OurGreenCommunity.org. This site includes a carbon footprint calculator to estimate the impact of your lifestyle on the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.