Everyday Earth Day II

Source: Organic.org

Below are some more of our favorite everyday tips for celebrating Earth Day.

Avoid cleaners containing phosphates
Spring Cleaning is upon us, but phosphates don't have to be. While cleaning your home, you may be unintentionally hurting the air, water and soil around your home.

Think twice before your spray a pesticide
Pesticides are poisons! Pesticides are a public health concern and have been linked to a number of diseases and disorders. Many chemical pesticides are known to cause poisoning, infertility, and birth defects, they can damage the nervous system and potentially cause cancer. Avoid them at all costs!

Lower your thermostat. Buy a programmable thermostat
Don't turn up the heat when you're not there! When installed and properly programmed to follow your daily and weekly patterns, a programmable thermostat can cut heating and cooling costs by about 10 percent-enough, in most cases, to pay for the device within one season and then yield home energy savings of about $150 a year.

Buy compact fluorescent light bulbs
Make better use of your light. ENERGY STAR qualified bulbs use about 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer.

Buy locally
Find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food near you. Consider how far a product has traveled before arriving at your local store. Buying locally produced products means less energy was used to bring the product to market.

Recycle Batteries
Rechargeable batteries like nickel-cadmium or small sealed lead-acid batteries, contain toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, and lead.

Eliminate junk mail at work
You probably don't realize it but junk mail is destroying our environment. By eliminating junk mail we can keep trees in the forest. More than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail, mail that you waste about 70 hours a year dealing with.

Avoid excessive packaging
When shopping try to pick the products with the least packaging, or packaging made from recycled materials.

Re-use lawn clippings
Your yard benefits from lawn clippings if mulched and left where they're cut. The clippings that help you save on expensive and potentially hazardous fertilizer improve the quality of the soil and the clippings help retain moisture so you don't have to waster as often.