Print Window Close Window 1. Save gas, inflate your tires. Underinflated tires can waste of up to 5% of a vehicle’s fuel. That’s up to 2 billion gallons wasted each year in the U.S. alone. Keeping your tires properly inflated can save you gas, save you money, and prevent unnecessary environmental damage. 2. Plug in your car below 20º F. Simply plugging in your car for 2 hours when it’s 20 degrees or colder can greatly decrease the amount of carbon monoxide and other toxins released into the air. Plus it’s easier on your car and will make it last a lot longer. 3. Carpool, take the bus, or ride your bike. If each commuter car or bus carried just one more person, we’d save 600,000 gallons of gasoline a day. It would also prevent 12 million pounds of carbon dioxide from polluting the atmosphere. Plus biking burns no gas and leads to better health. 4. Use compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs last 13 times longer and use ¼ of the energy of an incandescent lightbulb, resulting in an average savings of approximately $30 in electricity per bulb. If a single compact fluorescent was installed in each American household, it would save the equivalent of all the energy generated by one nuclear power plant running full-time for a year. 5. Turn down the heat when leaving the house. If each U.S. household lowered it’s average heating temperatures by 6º F over a 24 hour period, we would save 500,000 barrels of oil each day. Simply turning down the heat when you’re not home will make a considerable difference in our fossil fuel consumption. 6. Insulate windows. Every year, the energy equivalent of all the oil that flows through the Alaskan pipeline in a year leaks through American windows. In fact, nearly half of all the energy used in our homes is wasted - going out the windows, attics, cracks or other leaks. 7. Reuse ziploc bags, glass jars and plastic containers. Americans produce 154 million tons of garbage every year. 50% of this is recyclable. Even more is reusable. Simply by reusing ziploc bags, glass jars and plastic containers, we can decrease the amount of trash going to our landfills as well as the fossil fuels and energy required to create new products. 8. Bring your own bags to the grocery store. Plastic shopping bags are made from petroleum, a non-renewable resources, and contain cadmium, a highly toxic substance. By reusing your plastic bags or investing in cloth bags, you can decrease both fossil fuel consumption and air pollution. 9. Don’t use styrofoam containers. Americans produce enough styrofoam cups every year to circle the Earth 436 times. Styrofoam is completely non-biodegradable and may still be in existence 500 years in the future. Be sure to request paper cups, plates and containers wherever styrofoam is used. 10. Use rechargeable batteries (and recharge them!) Americans use 2 billion disposable batteries every year. Household batteries contain mercury and cadmium, two highly toxic substances which can leach out into the water if buried in landfills or contaminate the air if incinerated. By using rechargeable batteries, you can help decrease these life threatening sources of pollution. |