Things YOU Can Do To Help The Environment

Pay attention to the connections between what you do and how your actions (and those of others) affect the environment. Make changes in your daily life that will improve the environment. For example:

• Talk about environmental issues with your family, friends, neighbors, etc.
• Reduce your purchases of new goods as much as possible; reuse goods first; and recycle paper, plastics, metals and compostables as much as possible. These actions reduce the depletion of valuable resources.
• Whenever you go shopping, bring your own cloth, paper or plastic bags with you. Every time you reuse a paper or plastic bag you save one bag.
• Don’t buy over-wrapped products, like individually wrapped cheese slices. That unnecessary plastic will sit in landfills for hundreds of years.
• Buy products in recyclable containers. As more people buy them, more companies will use them.
• Ask the people in charge of your school cafeteria to serve food in reusable dishes and cups.
• If you carry your lunch to school, use recyclable containers instead of paper or plastic wrappings. Use a thermos for juice instead of buying waxed boxes that don’t easily break down.
• Recycle your own things. Trade books, games and magazines with your friends. Give your outgrown clothes to a younger friend or to a thrift shop. Learn to fix things, if possible, instead of throwing them away and buying new ones.
• Never throw out your own hazardous waste – like bug spray cans, oil paint and paintbrush cleaner or batteries – with the rest of the trash. Find out about your city’s hazardous waste disposal.
• Walk, bike, or use public transportation instead of driving. Share rides whenever possible.
• Grow houseplants to absorb carbon dioxide in the air. And plant a tree. Every tree you plant clears the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing life-giving oxygen.
• Turn the faucet off and on instead of letting the water run while washing your hands or brushing your teeth. It will save lots of water.
• Use safe, biodegradable products for laundry and household cleaning.
• Take shorter showers.
• Encourage your family not to use chemical fertilizers, pesticides or other toxic household chemical agents. They pollute streams, ground water, and soil.
• If you have a back yard, put out containers to catch rainwater. Use it to water flowers.
• Turn off lights in your house when not needed.
• Urge your family and friends to buy and eat seasonal, locally grown, organic fresh foods when available. Eat less meat. It takes 12 pounds of grain and 2500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of hamburger.
• Educate yourself about environmental issues through newspapers, magazines, TV, radio.
• When giving gifts, get environmentally creative by reusing wrapping paper, newspaper, brown paper bags or just tie a ribbon around the gift.
• Can you think of other ways to help the environment?