Top Tips

Here are several simple ways you can help combat global warming. You'll see that many of these actions can also help you save money.

Air Dry
You can save 700 pounds of carbon dioxide when you air dry your clothes for 6 months out of the year.

Buy Recycled
Buying recycled products closes the recycling loop. You can find recycled content in paper, packaging, tires, motor oil, and more. This is where your hard work separating paper, plastic and glass pays off.

Install a Programmable Thermostat
Programmable thermostats will automatically adjust the heat or air conditioning. It can save you $100 a year on your energy bill.

Use less Hot Water
It takes a lot of energy to heat water. You can use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead and washing your clothes in cold or warm water instead of hot.

Blanket your Hot Water
Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket and you'll save 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. You can save another 550 pounds per year by setting the thermostat no higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Blanket your Home
Properly insulating your walls and ceilings can save 25% of your home heating bill and 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Caulking and weather-stripping can save another 1,700 pounds per year.

Look for the Energy Star
If each household in the U.S. replaced its existing appliances with the most efficient models available, we'd eliminate 175 million tons of carbon dioxide every year!

Buy for Better MPG or Buy a Hybrid
You can save 3,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year if your new car gets only 3 miles per gallon more than your current one. You can get up to 60 miles per gallon with a hybrid!

Tune-in and Tune-up
Regular auto maintenance helps improve fuel efficiency and reduces emissions. When just 1% of car owners properly maintain their cars, nearly a billion pounds of carbon dioxide are kept out of the atmosphere.

Go Florescent
Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Clean Filters
Cleaning or replacing the filters on your furnace and air conditioner can save 350 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Keep up the Pressure
Proper inflation of vehicle tires can improve gas mileage by more than 3% and every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Buy Loose
Avoid heavily packaged products. You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%.

Think Global, Act Local
Participate in community actions to stop global warming. Fight for bike lanes, start the carpooling cooperative, bring solar power to city hall... You'll see results with the power of the people behind you.

Bag your Own
Bringing your own bags to the grocery store will reduce the impact of paper and plastic. If your bag is canvas, that would be even better.

Buy Fresh
Frozen food uses 10 times more energy to produce.

Bottle Your Own Water
The energy we waste using bottled water would be enough to power 190,000 homes. The making of all the bottles for US consumption requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually. Refilling your water bottle from the tap requires no expenditure of energy and wastes zero resources.

Make your Lawn Greener
Exhaust from small engines have forty times the smog emissions of an idling new automobile engine. Think about using a push mower and definitely lose the leaf blower when taking care of your lawn.

Buy Local
The average meal in the United States travels 1,200 miles from the farm to your plate. Buying locally will save fuel and keep money in your community.

Drive Smart
If you have to drive, do it fuel efficiently. Ease into acceleration out of stops, turn off your car when idling for long periods of time and keep your speed constant for the best fuel efficiency.

Park the Car
Reduce the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit. Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year!

Recycle!
You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide a year by recycling half of the waste your household generates.

Go Paper Free
Use cloth napkins, rags instead of paper towels, and get your newspaper online. If you find there is paper you just can't live without, be sure to recycle.

Go Vegan
Try a vegetarian meal at least once a week. Raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined. Besides, vegetables are just plain healthy.

Unplug electronics
Even when turned off, things like hairdryers, cell phone chargers and televisions use energy. Unplug items and reduce energy usage.

Plant a Tree
A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15%.

Buy Organic
Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils from conventional farms.

Turn off electronics
Simply turning off your television, computer, DVD player, stereo, and computer when you're not using them will save you thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Work Green
Make technology work for you. Do more telecommuting through email and remote access conferencing. This can reduce transportation emissions from the daily commute. You can also reduce air travel by eliminating needless business trips.

Invest in Green
Invest in stocks that support sustainable green companies. These companies focus on the good of the environment with organic products, renewable energy, clean transportation, green building, recycled products and more.

Wash Smart
Only run your dishwasher, washing machine, and dry when there's a full load and remember to use any energy-saving settings.

Clean Green
Use only non-toxic cleaning products. Toxic cleaning products contribute to global warming, ozone depletion and can add dangerous chemicals to drainage discharge. Give lemons, baking soda, and vinegar a try; you'll be surprised how well they cleanse.

Bring Green to Your Dry Cleaners
Save your wire hangers and bring your own garment bag to the dry cleaner to eliminate waste in caring for all your finer clothes.

Heat and Cool with the '2 & 2 rule'
Almost half of the energy we use in our homes goes to heating and cooling. You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year by simply moving your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer.

Build Green
Use environmentally friendly building materials for your home improvement projects. Rediscovered or reclaimed wood, natural fiber cotton insulation, energy efficient ventilation, lighting and more are all available for the earth-conscious builder.

Vote Green
Do your research and find the candidates who truly support green initiatives and have the record of accomplishment to prove it.