11 Ways to Be a Wee Bit Greener(sent to us by Jennifer at idealbite.com)1. Swapping is the New Shopping.
Want free clothes, more closet space and free personal stylists for a night? Throw a Swap Party where all your friends trade (a.k.a. "recycle") clothes from their closets. Serve organic wine, swap 'til everyone drops and you've got yourself a contender for party of the year. (
Get the full Bite.)
2. Compute This.Set computers to enter sleep mode after 5 minutes of idle time – you’ll be saving energy during those meetings! And, shut them down at night – contrary to eco-myth, its better for the earth and your computer to shut them off when you head home.
(
Get the full Bite.)
3. Use Direct Bill Pay.
Say goodbye to the days of writing checks, buying stamps, and licking envelopes. Use direct bill pay and you’ll save hassle, trees, and energy. Just ask your bank - most major banks have free bill pay services. If all U.S. households viewed and paid bills electronically, we’d save 18.5 million trees and 15.8 billion gallons of water per year. (
Get the full Bite.)
4. Go Veggie - One Day a Week.Becoming a full-time veg head not your thing? No worries... just pick up a veggie cookbook and try cooking veggie once a week. Since meat production's so resource-intensive, if 10,000 people gave up eating steak just once every seven days, it would save enough water to fill 22,719 Olympic-sized swimming pools and the weight of more than 9 humpback whales in fertilizer.
(
Get the full Bite.)
5. Fancy Your Fancy Napkins.Forget the notion that cloth napkins are for fancy occasions. By using cloth napkins everyday not only will you save a few trees, your friends will be impressed with your class and elegance (well, maybe just for a second or two). If 10,000 people all used just one less paper napkin per day, in a year we’d conserve the annual paper usage of 58 Americans.
(
Get the full Bite.)
6. Just Say “No” to Junk Mail.
Junk mail is more than just annoying. If everyone in the US was able to reduce their 10.8 pieces of junk mail received each week, we could save nearly 100 million trees each year. Search for “junk mail” in our Tip Library to get the links to online forms to get your name off junk mail lists. (
Get the full Bite.)
7. Set the Lint Bunnies Free.Cleaning out your dryer's lint screen after each load is an easy way to save energy and reduce fire hazard. Believe it or not, a dirty lint filter can cause your dryer to use as much as 30% more energy. (
Get the full Bite.)
8. Get Carded.Your library card gives you free access to books, movies, and music - plus borrowing keeps paper and plastic out of production. More than 3.1 billion books are purchased in the United States each year, and most are made from nonrecycled paper and petroleum-based inks. (
Get the full Bite.)
9. Join The Jones’.If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Pooling your resources with your neighbors for purchases like camping equipment and lawnmowers helps save those other, natural kind of resources. If 10,000 Biters go in on a 19-ft ladder with the Biters next door, we'll avert enough steel to fill 12 dump trucks, and save a little moola along the way. (
Get the full Bite.)
10. Fix Your Faves.Shoehorn a local cobbler into fixing or refurbishing your worn down shoes (yep, cobblers still exist outside of fairy tales). Same goes for clothes: Take them to a tailor, since repair is way cheaper than buying new and doesn't require the extraction of raw materials from the earth. New heels for your shoes or a skirt-hem stitch-up usually costs around $12 - much less than any new shoes or skirt. (
Get the Full Bite.)
11. Which Fish to Fry?When shopping for seafood, take along a free pocket guide or tap into a cool, new phone-text service that'll tell you whether that Chilean sea bass is eco-friendly-fine enough for your kettle. Scientists predict that there will be no more seafood by 2048 unless we change current (unsustainable) fishing methods. (
Get the Full Bite.)
