You don’t have to buy an electric car or install solar panels (but if you do, that’s good!) to make a difference. Here are ways you can go green:
- Check your tire pressure. Having your tire pressure at the appropriate psi can reduce strain on your engine and significantly increase your gas mileage.
- Use a reusable water container or bottle. The average time for a plastic bottle to biodegrade fully is approximately 450-1000 years. Hard and reusable bottles take a longer time, and the soft and non-reusable ones take a shorter time. Time also varies with the size of the bottle. If they are sitting in landfills sealed and compacted with all of the other trash and bottles with no air moving, they won't decompose at all.
- Replace your light bulbs. If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an Energy Star-rated light bulb, we would save enough energy to light 3 million homes for a year, save about $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to those from about 800,000 cars. Earth Day marks the launch of a new 20-year life bulb that uses 85% less energy.
- Turn off your power strips or use smart power strips. Putting your appliances and computers on power strips that can be turned off (or will turn off automatically); many appliances and computers continue to draw a small amount of power even when they are switched off.
- Wash a full load in cold. Unless you're dealing with oily stains, the cold water setting on your machine will generally do a good job of cleaning your clothes. Even switching your temperature setting from hot to warm can cut a load's energy use in half. If you are washing a small load, use the appropriate water-level setting.
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