20 Ways You Can Be Greener Today Than Yesterday

Adding a little more green into your daily routine doesn’t have to take a lot of time, nor does it need to be costly and complex. In actual fact, taking steps to go green can be relatively painless…at least when it comes to some of the basics.

Here is a list of 20 ways you can be greener today than yesterday:

1. Use a reusable water bottle to get your water intake for the day. If you don’t have a reusable water container, a cup or glass from the kitchen cabinet or office lunch room will do. (Just make sure you don’t take someone else’s.)
2. Spend at least 20 minutes outdoors. Being out in nature has been proven to have numerous health benefits, including helping lower stress levels and improve your mood.
3. Turn off the faucet while brushing teeth.
4. Limit your shower time (and at the same time, you can collect grey water to use when watering your indoor plants or garden).
5. Set your thermostat to 68 degrees F in the winter and 78 degrees F in the summer months. Of course, when you’re away, you can either turn your heat/ac off completely or adjust the temperature so it won’t automatically turn on while you’re gone.
6. Open your windows at night or in the early morning hours to let fresh air in and stale, polluted indoor air out.
7. Use natural light to light your home during daytime hours.
8. Keep the blinds open to let in natural heat, light and warmth or close the blinds to help maintain indoor temperatures.
9. Make your meal at home using organic, pesticide- and antibiotic-free foods instead of eating out.
10. Save leftovers and/or unused food so it can be eaten later.
11. Put unusable food scraps in the compost rather than the trash.
12. Take any items you can recycle instead of trash and add those to the recycling bin.
13. Walk, bike, take the train or carpool to work at least once a week.
14. Plant something. Plant a tree, plant an herb, plant some flowers or go out and do a little gardening. You can even plant kitchen scraps in order to grow more food.
15. Use reusable shopping bags and mesh produce bags when going to the grocery store.
16. Shop at a zero waste grocery store to help eliminate waste even more.
17. Unplug all appliances and electronics not in use. Keep these plugged in during all hours of the day only wastes energy and costs you money.
18. Make your own DIY cleaning products and natural air fresheners to use around the house.
19. Re-purpose t-shirts, towels and other items into cloths to use while cleaning around the house.
20. Opt out of pre-screened credit card offers and switch your bills to paperless billing. This way, you won’t get a bunch of mail you don’t need and you will usually just file or throw away.

If you already do some of these, keep it up! If there are other green activities you do on a daily or weekly basis, let us know in the comment section. We love to hear actions you take to be green and biofriendly!