1. Walk, bike, and carpool.
2. Eat lower on the food chain.
3. Make your home energy and water efficient.
4. Let your lawn go natural.
5. Reduce your junk mail and use paper with 100% post-consumer waste content.
6. Recycle computer supplies and use rechargeable Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries.
7. Recycle and reuse.

1. Walk, bike, and carpool.
In the United States, the car represents one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. However, you don't have to give up your car for a healthier planet, just expand your transportation options. By replacing your car some of the time, you can cut your emissions in half by commuting to work.

• Try combining trips to minimize emissions, which are greatest at the beginning of a journey before the engine has reached optimum temperature and efficiency.

• When purchasing your next car, make it a fuel-efficient one. Hybrid cars can get twice the fuel efficiency of the average new car, cut greenhouse gas emissions by half or more, and reduce urban air pollutants.

• Carpooling saves energy, cuts on additional pollution, and allows you to take a turn as a passenger instead of driving everyday.

• Car-sharing (not pooling) is available in numerous U.S. cities. Car-sharing enables you to rent a car just when you need it. Each car-share vehicle displaces four to eight privately held cars, requiring less parking area and creating less road congestion.

• If you live within an hour's bicycle ride to the office (~10 miles), consider biking to work one or more days a week.

2. Eat lower on the food chain.
The American diet is notorious for its high animal content, compared to the rest of the world whose diets are overwhelmingly plant-based. A meat-based diet requires up to ten times the land area of a plant-based one. Much of the 13 million hectares (more than 50,000 square miles) of tropical forest lost each year is converted for agricultural use, including land for cattle grazing and feed production. This permanently destroys essential habitat while releasing more than a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Aquatic species are threatened by feed production where water is diverted or becomes polluted by agricultural runoff.

The large and expanding human consumption of marine species is a major threat to ocean ecosystems. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 70 percent of global marine fish stocks have already reached or exceeded biological limits for commercial exploitation.

You can change these trends, and you don't have to adopt a strict, vegetarian lifestyle.

• Replace one beef meal each week, and save more than 40,000 gallons of water, some 70 tons of grain, and keep 300 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere each year.

• When you choose seafood, consult seafood buying charts so you know which species are sustainably harvested.

• Think twice about eating shrimp. Shrimp harvesting results in one of the largest "by-catch" waste streams of any fishing operation. Up to 10 pounds of fish are destroyed for each pound of shrimp caught. Annually, tens of thousands of endangered turtles and thousands of dolphins are killed by shrimp nets. Additionally, shrimp farms often destroy and pollute biodiversity-rich mangroves and estuaries.

3. Make your home energy and water efficient.
The energy we use at home is not only a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, but affects our budgets as well.

• Purchase EnergyStar-labeled appliances. EnergyStar products are among the top 25 percent most efficient and can provide a 30 percent return or better through lower utility bills.

• Turn down the thermostat just three degrees in the winter and up three degrees in the summer. You can prevent the emission of nearly 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.

• Replace incandescent bulbs in your home with high-performance, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). A CFL initially costs more than an incandescent lamp, but lasts 13 times longer and consumes 75 percent less electricity. More than 10,000 hours of operation will net roughly $50 in savings. It also prevents the release of half a ton of greenhouse gas emissions.

• Replace your showerheads and faucets with high-efficiency models. Retrofitting just one showerhead and two faucets will reduce water usage by 50 percent to 70 percent, while maintaining the same user experience. The cost savings you’ll see on your water and electricity bills will pay for the retrofit in only three to 12 months.

4. Let your lawn go natural.
Americans collectively maintain 20 million acres of lawns. Yale forest ecologist, F. Herbert Bormann reports in "Redesigning the American Lawn:"

• A lawnmower pollutes as much in one hour as does driving an automobile for 350 miles.

• Thirty percent to 60 percent of urban fresh water is used for watering lawns (depending on city).

• More than $5 billion per year is spent on fossil fuel-derived fertilizers for U.S. lawns.

• Sixty-seven million pounds of synthetic pesticides are used on U.S. lawns each year.

• Each year, 580 million gallons of gasoline are used for lawnmowers.

• Replace much or all of your lawn with pesticide-free vegetables, fruits, and flowers.

• For the lawn you maintain, replace the power mower with a push mower, and leave the cuttings on the lawn or collect them for composting.

• Make your lawn wildlife-friendly by providing water, fruit bearing native plants, and shelter.

• Keep cats indoors. According to estimates by the National Audubon Society, house cats contribute to 100 million bird deaths per year.

• Compost your organic garbage and yard clippings. Not only does composting save water and electricity from not using a garbage disposal, but it also reduces the need for trash hauling and landfill expansion. Best of all, it's good for your soil.

• Collect your rain water for your lawn and garden. Rain barrel collection systems can capture rain from your home's roof allowing you to cut your water bill, lighten the load on your sewer and municipal system, protect nearby rivers and streams, and keep water away from your foundation. Each inch of rain on a 1000 sq ft roof yields 623 gallons of water.

5. Reduce junk mail and use paper with 100% post-consumer waste content.
The average person receives more than 64 catalogs per year, or more than 17 billion across the U.S. annually – 40 percent of which is never opened. The environmental impacts of logging, pulping, transporting, using, and disposing of this 4 million tons of paper annually are substantial.

• Shop online and cancel unwanted catalog subscriptions by calling the company's 800-toll-free phone Share the catalogs you want with neighbors and friends.

• Try to purchase paper products – toilet paper, computer paper, stationary, gift wrap, etc. – with the highest post-consumer waste recycled content. This avoids purchasing paper manufactured from old growth and pristine forests. According to New Leaf paper, one ton of 100 percent post-consumer waste saves the following resources: 12 trees, around a half ton of solid waste, around 1,200 gallons of water, enough electricity to power an average home for 2 months, greenhouse gases equivalent to driving a car for 1600 miles, 8.5 pounds of urban air pollutants, and 1.5 cubic yards of landfill space.

6. Recycle computer supplies and use rechargeable Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries.

• Take used floppy disks, unwanted CDs, DVDs, videos, and dead batteries to a local recycling facility. Computer users throw away more than one billion disks per year, while 4 billion consumer batteries are purchased annually in the U.S.

• Use rechargeable batteries, such as Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries. Consumers throw away nearly 300 million pounds of batteries each year. While batteries account for less than 0.1 percent of municipal solid waste, they contribute a disproportionate percentage of toxic heavy metals, primarily mercury and cadmium, to the waste stream. In 1995, nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cad) rechargeable batteries were estimated to represent approximately 75 percent of the cadmium found in municipal solid waste.

7. Recycle and reuse.

• Recycle your cans, jars, bottles, and paper. Recycling saves energy, reduces emissions, reduces the need for additional mining and logging in sensitive habitats, and lowers the threat of aquatic and marine ecosystem deterioration. For example, it takes 90 percent less electricity to produce aluminum from recycled cans than from virgin sources.

• Carry your groceries in reusable bags. The average consumer uses 500 disposable paper and plastic grocery bags a year. Paper bags cannot be made from recycled paper, plastic bags are made from petrochemicals and both types are rarely recycled. If you use plastic sacks for vegetables or groceries, reuse them before dropping them off at supermarket recycle bins.