or try to do less often
cut out and place refrigerator magnet                             here X

1. [  ] Don’t buy bottled water – get yourself a good steel water bottle and bring it with you – available almost anywhere – even at Ace Hardware 
2. [  ] Don’t buy lunch – try packing your own lunch a few times/week – saves you money and much less packaging tossed
3. [  ] Don’t take a bag – if you are just walking back to your car with one item – do you really need to put your purchase in a bag?
4. [  ] Don’t buy new – there’s a lot of stuff we don’t use often – people are always selling or giving things away on Craigslist – anything you can imagine – a monitor for your computer, lawn furniture, skis, even electric cars.  Buying used is great for sports gear, where new items might only be used for one season.  Think about baseball gloves – let someone else break in a new glove for you – you get it with a nice pocket already.
5. [  ] Don’t eat meat at every meal – raising cows and other animals contributes greatly to global warming.  Try to cut out meat a little, if we all did this the savings would be significant.  I’ve found that lunch is a simple opportunity for me to consume less meat.
6. [  ] Don’t leave your computer on.  Using an electricity monitor, I was shocked how much my machines were consuming all night long.  Turn it off, you’ll save electricity and money, and no, it doesn’t hurt the hard drives to turn them on and off.
7. [  ] Don’t leave your car running.  With modern fuel injection vehicles, the old practice of leaving it idle if you’re going to be less than 5 minutes no longer holds true.  If your stopping, turn it off.
8. [  ] Don’t drive fast.  Lowering your speed on the highway will reduce fuel consumption considerably.  Slower, less acceleration up hill, coast more – do all these things and reap savings up to 20%.  Of course, driving less helps even more – consolidate your errands, walk your kids to school.
9. [  ] Don’t turn that sprinkler system on until the rains have stopped.
10. [  ] Don’t assume someone else will fix this global warming problem – we all need to change our habits. 

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10 things to know - and teach your kids
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check off when taught to someone else:

1. [  ] Batteries are not garbage – bad for the environment and illegal to toss.  Options for disposal – bring to the fire department, local hardware store, or schools for collection.
2. [  ] CFLs – the curly bulbs – great for using less energy, but they are also not for the garbage pail – they are hazardous waste.  Fortunately they last a long time, but if you have some dead ones, you can bring them to Ikea, Home Depot or possibly your local hardware store for collection.
3. [  ] Shredded paper – did you know this is not recyclable?  The fibers of the paper are cut too small to make new paper, but it’s great for compost, so put it in your green bin.
4. [  ] Green bins – the more shredded paper, garden waste, cardboard food containers/pizza boxes, to mix with your food scraps, the less odor and flies.  
5. [  ] Tissues, napkins, paper towels – can all go in the green bin.
6. [  ] Where’s the worst place for food scraps?
   • The garbage – green waste in landfills creates methane – 22 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
7. [  ] Best place?  
   • 1. [Best] Your own garden compost – if you can do it at home, you’ll benefit more, and less green waste will be trucked around.
   • 2. [Better] Your green bin – this is an easy thing to divert from the landfill – it’s heavy, and makes up a large amount of our waste.
   • 3. [Not a bad option] Your garbage disposal – water treatment plants often take the solid waste collected from the sanitary sewer (food and human waste) and use the methane collected from this organic matter to create electricity to power the water treatment process.
8. [  ] Kid’s shoes with lights - cannot go into the garbage – they are hazardous waste!  They contain lead, electronics and batteries.  Don’t buy them.  Check out Simpleshoes.com for shoes made from recycled materials.
9. [  ] Solar electricity systems for your roof – an investment which will payback financially, environmentally, and “karmicly.”  And the federal tax credit has never been better – 1/3 of the cost of your system, back to you as a tax credit!  Learn more http://www.find-solar.org/
10. [  ] Green waste recycling programs – they haven’t been started just because it’s the right thing to do for the environment.  While it is that, there are also mandates for cities to divert 75% of waste away from the landfill.  Green waste accounts for a lot of our garbage, by weight, and if participation in the kitchen scrap – green bin collection goes up, cities will be on their way toward diversion goals.

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10 things to do – your early November checklist 
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check off when completed:

1. [  ] Throw all those rotting pumpkins into the Green bin – not the garbage.
2. [  ] Turn off your sprinklers now that the rain has started.  If there are some dry weeks, you can run them manually – but otherwise, keep them off.
3. [  ] Get off junk mail lists – some commercial providers will help you do this:
   • http://greendimes.com
   • http://catalogchoice.com
4. [  ] Earthquake kit – this is the best one – Remove your food from your earthquake kit and donate it for Thanksgiving food drives.  Then buy new food to replenish your earthquake kit.  Doing this every Thanksgiving season is an easy way to keep your emergency supplies up to date and to fund food drives. Be mindful about food expiration dates.
5. [  ] Turn down your water heater – from 140 to 120.  You won’t notice the difference – I saved about 10% on the gas bill.
6. [  ] Look into replacing your top loading washer with a more efficient front loader – you’ll save water and energy, and your clothes will be almost twice as dry, cutting your dryer times in half.
7. [  ] Save your sheets of wasted paper, kids drawings, faxes – bring them to a copy place and they will make them into useful scrap pads.  It’s fun to look on the back on your todo lists and see a partial drawing of a rocket ship.
8. [  ] Pull out your refrigerator and vacuum the coils on the back – saves electricity.  While your there, try lowering the fridge temperature.
9. [  ] Look at your garden – what plants need a ton of water?  Start noticing the Bay friendly, low water, landscaping people are putting in.  We all will be moving toward this – we need to start conserving more water.  Start thinking Mediterranean, and less England – and be ready with ideas for planting changes in the Spring.
10. [  ] Unplug, unplug, unplug.  Cell phone chargers, power bricks for hard drives, TVs, they all use power.  Better yet, get a few powerstrips – put the TV/stereo on one, when you’re not watching, turn the whole strip off.  When plasma TVs are off, they use about 7% of the power they do when they’re on – that means it cost you more to have your TV off for 23 hours, than it does for the hour you’re watching it. 

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