If each one of us can do a little bit to reduce our consumption of natural resources it would make a big difference to future generations here in America and around the world.

Here are some simple ways you may not have thought of to conserve our natural resources. This is the “reduce” section.

Paper Towels? Over 90% of American households use paper towels, creating over 3,000 tons of waste each day. Switching to recycled roll paper towels can help cut down on all this trash. How about using more cloth dish towels instead of paper towels? Or cloth napkins instead of paper?

Cancel those catalogues and junk mailings:  Register to have your name removed from mailing lists. There are two main resources to help you accomplish this. One is a free service called the National Do Not Mail List, offered by DirectMail.com, which makes the list available to mailing list owners and users for one reason only: so they can remove (or add) your name to their lists based on your stated preferences.  Another service is offered by the Direct Marketing Association, which historically was free but which now charges $1. Your request is good for five years, and you can let them know what mail you want to get as well as what you don’t want. Call  the catalogue companies and ask to be removed from their mailing list, then recycle the catalogue. Call 888-567-8688 to get off the lists of all major credit bureaus. You can also do this online at: http://www.optoutprescreen.com.  Then, remove your name from major nationwide sweepstakes mailers, contact: Publishers Clearinghouse, 101 Channel Drive, Port Washington, NY 11050 Phone: (800) 645-9242,and Readers Digest, Readers Digest Road, Pleasantville, NY 10570 Phone: (800) 234-9000, American Family Publishers, PO Box 62000, Tampa, FL 33662 Phone: (800) 237-2400.

Water in your house.  A typical American household uses 350 gallons of water each day. About half that—175 gallons—is used indoors (toilets consume about 30 percent of the indoor total). Unnecessary water usage comes in the form of leaks. Fixing leaky faucets and toilets is a quick and easy way to conserve water. A steady faucet drip can waste 20 gallons of water a day. Leaky toilets are even worse, wasting upward of 100 gallons a day. Since toilet leaks are generally silent, check for them regularly by removing the tank cover and adding food coloring. If the toilet is leaking (and 20 percent of them usually are), color will appear in the bowl within 30 minutes.

Rinse no more!  I usually stop all my guests from “being helpful” as they rinse their dinner dishes. “My dishwasher can handle it. ” I say. And it can. According to Consumer Reports, pre-rinsing dishes does not necessarily improve a dishwasher’s ability to clean them. By skipping the wash before the wash, you can save up to 20 gallons of water per dishload. At one load a day, that’s 7,300 gallons over the course of the year. Not to mention that you’re saving time, dishwashing soap, and the energy used to heat the additional water.

Showers not baths.  The average American household consumes about 60 gallons of water a day from showers and baths. To reduce this number, take quick showers and install a low-flow showerhead that uses fewer than 2.5 gallons of water per minute, as compared to about 5 gallons with an older showerhead. Baths are relaxing, but it can take 50 gallons of water to fill a tub.

Turn it off. By leaving the water running while you brush your teeth, you can waste 150 gallons of water per month—that’s 1,800 gallons a year! Turning the water off while you brush can save several gallons of water per minute. Also pay attention to this water-saving principle while doing the dishes.

Turn the heat down a degree or two, or in Arizona, turn it up a degree in the summer!  If you turn your thermostat down by one degree, your heating costs will decrease by about 3 percent. Turn it down five more degrees for four hours a day and reduce your heating bills by almost 6 percent. If you’re going to be away for the weekend or out in the evening, turn your thermostat down. It’s not true that reducing the temperature means it will take more heat to bring it back up to a warm level (unless you have a heat pump in your home). Also, turn the heat down if you are throwing a party—every guest will be the equivalent of a 100-watt heater.

Travel green.  Air travel is currently responsible for 3.5 percent of the global-warming gases from all human activity and is growing fast. Cargo transport by air is increasing by about 7 percent annually and passenger air travel is up in the last few years by between 4 and 7 percent. The impact of air travel is enormous; a round-trip between New York and Los Angeles emits one ton of CO2 per passenger. (To determine CO2 emissions for your next flight, go to co2.org.) Try to limit the number of flights you take. If you’re traveling within a country, why not take a train? (Air travel releases at least three times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than rail travel does.) If you’re planning a business trip, consider whether a video linkup or a conference call will suffice.  Air traffic is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse-gas emissions, so when you do fly, consult a carbon-offsetting organization such as Climate Care to “carbon-offset” your journey.  For more information, visit climatecare.org.

Powering your home –  Switch to green power. The leading cause of industrial air pollution is electricity production. According to the American Lung Association, more than 50,000 Americans die each year from air-pollution-related causes. If available, get your electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind, sun, water, and biomass, all of which generate electricity with fewer environmental impacts. With utility companies in 35 states offering green-power pricing plans, around half of all electricity consumers could buy green, yet only half a million do. Does green power cost more? Yes, but barely. Check with  charges an additional one-half cent per kilowatt-hour for its green-power products. To see if your energy provider offers green-power options, visit eere.energy.gov/greenpower.  In Arizona, check out APS’s  Green Choice Rates.

Don’t keep your electronics on “stand-by”.  Electricity “leaks” are no laughing matter. Televisions, video and DVD players, cable boxes, and other electronic equipment found in nearly every American home are wasting huge amounts of energy. When these devices are left on standby (the equivalent of “sleep” mode for computers) they use about 40 percent of their full running power. Every year, the energy wasted in this way is the equivalent of the annual output of 26 power plants. To avoid the drain of these “energy vampires,” plug them into a power strip and turn it off when they are not in use.

Unplug your chargers.  Most cell-phone chargers continue to draw electricity even when the phone isn’t plugged into it. If your cell-phone charger averages five watts per hour and is plugged in all the time, that means a total of more than 40 kilowatt-hours every year, or about 93 pounds of CO2. The same problem applies to your other electronic equipment—your laptop, iPod, digital camera, and BlackBerry. Unplug all your chargers when they are not in use.

Get involved in your own state’s energy policies – where does your electricity come from? What happens with power plant emissions?  How much renewable enegy is mandated in your state? Could it be more?

How does your waste management company manage your waste?  What do they actually do with your ‘recyclables?”

Waste in America:  FUN FACTS:

America has 4.7% of the worldwide population and produces about 33% of the world’s solid waste. That’s about 11 billion tons per year, an average of 44 tons per person, 35 billion bottles, 60 billion cans, 25 trillion Styrofoam cups, 50 million tons of paper, 100 million tires, 4 million tons of plastic, and 3 million cars are thrown into landfills in America each year!

Since January, 17 billion bottles, cans and plastic bottles have either ended up on the side of the road, in a landfill, or incinerated. 1.5 billion barrels of oil are consumed each year to produce the plastic for water bottles, enough to fuel 100,000 cars.

From Thanksgiving to Christmas, the waste in this country increases by 25%, with empty boxes, rolls of paper, plastic packaging, Styrofoam peanuts, and food and beverage containers.

ALL ABOUT…. RECYCLING

GLASS

Glass recycled in Sedona by Sedona Recycles will end up as a beer bottle for Corona or other beer manufactured in Mexico!   At Sedona Recycles a ton of glass is sold for $10 on average. Making glass from recycled glass saves 50% of energy from making glass out of virgin material.Every glass bottle recycled saves enough energy for a 100-watt light bulb to be lit for 4 hours. Yavapai county residents throw away 7.5 million pounds of glass each year. Glass takes 1,000,000 years to decompose. A ton of resources is saved for every ton of glass recycled. New York’s bottle deposit law has saved $50 million in cleanup costs, $100 million on energy and created 3,800 jobs. Glass never wears out and can be recycled forever.   

PLASTIC

Plastic is a petroleum product and has value as a recyclable material in both domestic and foreign markets like China or Mexico, where it has multiple uses from flowerpots to decking to carpeting!

Americans throw away about 2.5 million non-returnable plastic bottles EVERY HOUR. Plastic bottles, tubs and tubes last indefinitely in landfills. (Did you know that the U.S. EPA sets more stringent quality standards for tap water than the FDA does for bottled beverages, and roughly 40% of bottled water is actually just tap water?)

Only 14% of these plastic water bottles of are recycled. A water bottle in a landfill or lying around as litter will take over 1,000 years to biodegrade. Nationwide, shopping bag recycling remains at just 1% of the 100 billion polyethylene plastic bags used each year are recovered! Plastic bags last 20 years in landfills. Many animals die when if they become entangled in the plastic or mistake it for food and they eat it and it gets trapped in their digestive track.

ALUMINUM, TIN & STEEL

Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch. That means you can make 20 cans out of recycled material with the same energy it take to make one can of new material. Aluminum is the most recycled material.

• In the U.S. we throw away enough aluminum to rebuild the country’s entire commercial airline fleet every three months!  Aluminum lasts 100 years in our landfills
• The energy saved by recycling one aluminum can will run a TV for three hours!
• The energy saved each year by steel recycling is equal to the electrical power used by 18 million homes each year – or enough energy to last Los Angeles residents for eight years.
• Americans throw out enough iron and steel to supply all the nations’ automakers on a continuous basis.
• A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution and mining waste by about 70%.

PAPER & CARDBOARD

There are 63 million newspapers printed each day in the U.S.; 44 million, or about 69 percent, of these will be thrown away. Recycling just the Sunday papers would save more than half a million trees every week.

• Everything comes in a box. Every year we use the equivalent of 120 corrugated cardboard boxes for every American.
• By recycling cardboard, we save about ¼ of the energy used to manufacture it.
• Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper per year, or about 580 pounds per person.
• Every day American businesses generate enough paper to circle the earth 20 times!
• Approximately 40% of our trash is paper. 65% of all garbage is the U.S. is packaging. 75% of all commercial waste is cardboard.
• 900 million trees are cut down each year to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills. Paper products use up at least 35% of the world’s annual commercial wood harvest.
• If all of the newspapers printed in the U.S. on a typical Sunday were recycled, we would save 550,000 trees–or about 26 million trees per year. Every Sunday, Americans throw out 90% of recyclable newspapers.
• It takes a 15-year-old tree to produce 700 grocery bags.
• One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.
• 14 billion catalogs (an average of 54 per American) and 38 billion pieces of junk mail are sent each year. Each person will receive almost 560 pieces of junk mail this year. That’s 4.5 million tons of junk mail produced each year!
• The average person gets only 1.5 personal letters each week, compared to 10.8 pieces of junk mail. 100 million trees are ground up each year to produce junk mail.
• 44% of all junk mail is thrown in the trash, unopened and unread. Approximately 40% of the solid mass that makes up our landfills is paper and paperboard waste. By the year 2010, it is predicted to make up about 48%.

 ELECTRONICS

426,000 cell phones—complete with batteries and chargers—are pitched each year adding up to an annual 155 million phones a year. This leads to tons of garbage. In your phone, you’ll find arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel and zinc that make up the wiring and computer chips that allow you to receive and transmit calls. But in the trash, these chemicals escape their plastic housings and wind their way through air, land and water into the fatty tissues of animals and humans, increasing in concentration as they climb up the food chain —some of the most deadly persistent bioaccumulative toxins on the planet.  Donate or recycle your phone.

Other ways to be earthy:

Plant a tree.  Or better yet, plant a seed. A lot of them!   It’s the simplest thing in the world to gather acorns, chestnuts, sweet chestnuts, and sycamore seeds in the autumn, plant them immediately, and forget them until the following spring. It may seem like a very small contribution, but if 5 percent of the U.S. population were to germinate one tree in one year, there would be almost 15 million extra trees absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. For more information, visit arborday.org.

Want to do more? You can grow your own food, compost your leaves:and kitchen scraps for your garden.