Unplug Appliances and Turn Off the Lights

Always turn the lights off when you leave the room. This habit can be hard to start but it allows you to save a ton of energy that you really do not need to be using. Thankfully most modern homes are equipped with light switches a each door so its so easy to flick the lights on and off as you need them.

Another huge energy drain is from leaving common household appliances plugged into the wall. Such as toasters, coffee makers, blenders, even power strips and can slowly suck energy and run up your electric bill. In my apartment any plug that is easily accessible is always unplugged. I also find with helps prevent procrastination. TV is not as appealing if you have to try and plug it in first.

Dry Your Clothes Outside

Drying your clothes outside is a huge energy saver. The average dryer uses 4,400 watts of energy per cycle. This may not sound like a lot but if only a quater of the human population in America just hung one load of laundry out to dry we could save 340,081,512 Kw of energy.

Think of all the resources we could save if every just started doing one load of laundry outside.

The biggest complaint I here about putting laundry outside is that it make the clothes to stiff. I understand I battle with this myself. I usually end up letting heavy clothes that take forever to dry like jeans, towels, and sweat shirts dry on the line while keeping my favorite shirts and underwear out of the public eye. I have also found that if you only dry your shirts and underwear it takes only twenty minutes. Saving time money and most importantly the earth.

Recycle

Humans are incredibly wasteful creatures. Here are some humbling facts.

Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet

If only 100,000 people stopped their junk, mail, we could save up to 150,000 trees annually. If a million people did this, we could save up to a million and a half trees.

Recycling really does work. Here are some examples.

Recycled paper can also be made into paper towels, notebook paper, envelopes, copy paper and other paper products, as well as boxes, hydro-mulch, molded packaging, compost, and even kitty litter

Glass never wears out -- it can be recycled forever. We save over a ton of resources for every ton of glass recycled -- 1,330 pounds of sand, 433 pounds of soda ash, 433 pounds of limestone, and 151 pounds of feldspar

So, Why should you take two seconds out of your day and throw that soda can in the recycling bin instead of the trash can.

Artificial products can take hundreds of thousands of years to break down. Glass will never break down when buried. Many products begin to leak toxic chemicals into the ground as they degrade if not recycled properly. This means that we are filling our landfills with items that will take a very long time to break down and even when they do they could jeopardize our health.

So how can you get into recycling. Separate your paper, plastic bottles, glass bottles, aluminum cans, and cardboard out of your normal trash. Place them only in designated recycling bins on your curb or at the local recycling plant. Some recycling plants will even pay you for bring recyclables to the plant. Its that easy.

Replace The Lightbulbs

Change all the light bulbs in your house from incandescent to florescent bulbs. Incandescent bulbs are a huge waste of energy. 85 percent of the energy that goes into a incandescent bulbs is converted into heat and produces no light at all. Only about 15 percent of energy is converted into white light. With Florescent bulbs 50 to 90 percent of energy is converted into light. This means a lot less energy for a lot more light. In fact a 15 watt florescent bulb will produce the same amount of light as a 60 watt incandescent. That can add up to a lot of savings.

Lets say you spend 20 dollars a month on electricity with incandescent bulbs right now. At 9 cents a kilowatt you have 222 kilowatts to spend. Thats equal to 370 hours of light divided into the number of light bulbs in your house lets say fifteen.

Thats 24 hours of light per light bulb per month.

With florescent bulbs you get a grand total of 987 hours of light per bulb per month. Wow thats a lot more bang for your buck. These bulbs are 41% more efficient.

If money persuades you. You can save 100 dollars a year for every 15 light bulbs you replace if florescent lighting. Sweet!