ways to reduce your impact

Insulating your walls can save you hundreds of dollars on heating and cooling costs each year. Insulating the attic will help people in both warm and cool climates save money because you will not be spending more money to heatcool that attic space as well.

Maintain your air conditioning and heating systems by changing air filters and keeping your air conditioner coils clean. Energy is lost when air conditioners and hot air furnaces have to work harder to draw air through dirty filters. Cleaning a dirty air conditioner filter can save 5 percent of the energy used. That could save 175 pounds of carbon dioxide per year.

Do you have an old house? Use nice oriental rugs for inexpensive insulation.

Use power strips for easy onoff switching of televisionsstereosDVD playerscable boxesetc... Their standby consumption can be equivalent to that of a 75 or 100 watt light bulb running continuously.

Enable the sleep mode feature on your computer, allowing it to use less power during periods of inactivity. In Windows, the power management settings are found on your control panel. Mac users, look for energy saving settings under system preferences in the apple menu. Configure your computer to hibernate automatically after 30 minutes or so of inactivity. The hibernate mode turns the computer off in a way that doesn t require you to reload everything when you switch it back on. Allowing your computer to hibernate saves energy and is more time efficient than shutting down and restarting your computer from scratch.

If allowed, print and photocopy on both sides of the paper. I hate it when I get a test at school that has just one side printed on. Save a few trees, print on both sides.

Paper products are the most widely used products in society today. We cannot forget that paper is made from one of the most valuable resource on the planet. Several energy intensive steps must be performed to finally produce a paper sheet. GreenLine Paper Company is one of the leading recycled paper distributors in USA. You can buy their environmental friendly recycled paper products from their website.

Dusty coils (at the back of your refrigerator) make it work harder than necessary. If you just dust them off, or clean them, their efficiency will improve.

Brooms before Hoses man! Using a broom to sweep sidewalks, driveways, and other walkways will save 150 gallons or more of water each time. If you do it once a week, that is close to 600 gallons a month. All for really, an unnecessary use.

Long showers feel great, but long energy bills do not. Shorten up your showers, estimates show that even a one or two minute reduction can save up to 700 gallons per month.