• Recycle all recyclable materials.
• Switch to dish towels instead of paper towels.

• Receive the electronic editions of your local paper rather than having the paper delivered.
• Sign up with the post office and your bank to receive your bills online. Then pay your bills electronically.

• Look into buying your clothing at second-hand stores.
• Make sure that your thermostat is set to 25 degrees Celsius in the summer and 21 degrees Celsius in the winter.
• Turn off your lights when you leave a room.
• Switch your lights to energy smart compact florescent lights.
• Upgrade your computer, electronics, and appliances to energy star models.
• Unplug any electronics that are not in use. These are energy suckers.
• Use fans in the hot months instead of using air conditioning.
• Ensure that your windows are sealed and replace caulking if necessary.
• An energy audit could be completed on your home. This will tell you how much energy is being wasted.
• Keep your refrigerator between 2-5 degrees Celsius and the freezer at –18 degrees Celsius. These temperatures keep food safe but any lower temperature wastes power.
• Keep your homes temperature at the most environmentally friendly temperature, which is 21-25 degrees Celsius. A $90 programmable thermostat can be purchased to save energy.
• Power bars should be used for plugging in all your electronics. Turn off your power bar after turning off your computer to save additional energy.

• Install water saving flush kits on your toilets to save thousands of liters of water every year.
• You can install a water-saving showerhead in you bathroom.
• Install a carbon filter to your taps to have tap water as drinking water rather than using bottle water. Bottled water wastes resources in the bottling process, uses plastic in the container, and wastes energy in shipping and handling.

• Bottled water is less regulated than tap water
• Plastic bottles could be leaching contaminants into your water

• Switch to Green power. Look into this at Enmax: https://www.enmax.com/Energy/Res/Go+Green/Greenmax.htm or Bullfrog Power: http://www.bullfrogpower.com/

• Windpower your computer. Look into this at the Pembian Institute: www.pembina.org/wind

• Eat organically because:

• organic food has no chemicals.
• the growing process for organic food does not involve endangering wildlife, workers, and waterways.
• your meat and eggs are drug free.
• the ingredients are not genetically modified.
• organic produce is higher in vitamin C and contains 30% more antioxidants.

• Be a vegetarian. Being a vegetarian is one of the top things you can personally do for the environment because:

• meat production requires 10 to 20 times more energy than grain production.
• one-fifth of the planets land is used for grazing animals.
• huge amounts of water are wasted by meat production.
• You won’t be ingesting antibiotics.

• When purchasing groceries:

• try to buy foods that do not have any packing.
• if your product has plastic packaging, check the code of the plastics to ensure that that code is recyclable in your area.
• purchase products that use recycled packaging.

• buy in bulk.

Some information sourced from ECOHOLIC by Adria Vasil

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