Celebrating Earth Day is a fantastic event and it gets us thinking of the environment and what more we can do. And we can do more. We can take the ideas and lessons learned on Earth Day and apply them to our everyday lives.

6 Simple Things You Can Do Everyday

1. Give up bottled water. Did you know that in America we throw out more than 40 Million plastic bottles every year from bottled beverages, including bottled water? And only 20% of those bottles get recycled.

   What you can do:At home, put a filter on your tap and use a glass. If you’re going to the gym; take your own reusable water bottle. At the office, get a water filter or a water service.

2. Use reusable bags at the store. With your own reusable bags you will know the answer to that annoying question of “paper or plastic?” – You will say, “Canvas, please!” If you did this one little thing, you personally would save 500 plastic bags going into the landfill every year.

   Now that is Earth Life!

3. Eat less (red) meat.
   

   According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, one pound of red meat is responsible for 20 times the land use, five times the water use, and three times the greenhouse gas pollution compared with a portion of beans or pasta.

4. Create an organic garden. Planting your own vegetables means you can ensure they are organic and healthy. And getting your food out of your own garden cuts the carbon emissions that would have been required to bring you food from the farm to the store to your table. Learn all about organic gardening at Gardenerd.com.
5. Cut the junk mail. First, go to Do Not Mail.org and sign the petition for the “Do Not Mail” Campaign to stop junk mail. This is a campaign to create legislation similar to the “Do not call” registry. We canned spam in our email boxes and we stopped the “junk” phone calls. Now we can stop junk mail, too.

   Second, even though the Do Not Mail registry isn’t created yet there are a few paid serves you can get to stop your junk mail.

   • 41pounds.org (not for profit): Cost: $41 for 5 years
   • GreenDimes.com (for profit): Cost: $15 per year
   • StopJunkMail.com (for profit): Cost: $19.95 for individuals and $24.95-$84.95 for businesses
6. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. The tried and true… But I think we are all getting the idea of reuse and recycle so I would like to focus on “reduce.” Put simply, buy less stuff. America is the largest consumer market in the world with the smallest population compared to other industrialized countries. Do we really need all that junk?

   In my neighborhood you drive down the street and even though every house has a 2 car garage, all the cars are parked on the street. Why? because that 2 car garage is full of junk that we bought and clearly don’t need.

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