1. Recycle. About a year ago, my town put in large recycle dumpsters in the WalMart parking lot.  Since then, we have cut down the amount of trash we are sending to the landfill by 2/3rds.  Think about how many plastic bottles, soda cans, newspapers, etc. you throw out in your trash.  All of that can be recycled. Check around your neighborhood, many are now offering free recycle bins for you to put your recyclables in.

2. Reuse. This goes hand in hand with recycling.  I love the large jars of marinated artichoke hearts I get from Costco.  Yum.  And when I’m finished with them, the glass jars are the perfect size to store my organic fertilizer in for my plants.  This way, I get two uses out of the container.

I also save all of my packaging materials I get from items shipped to me, and reuse them when I mail out purchases from my store, Wiccan Magick Shack.  I have a paper shredder I use to shred my junk mail. (I really enjoy doing that)  I use the shredded paper to put around items in flat rate boxes (It is heavier than popcorn, so I don’t use it for non-flat rate boxes) and use some in my compost pile.

3. Switch to compact Florescent bulbs. A typical compact florescent bulb uses 75 percent less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb.  Yes, they are a bit pricey to first buy them, but they pay for themselves within 6 months.  We bit the bullet and replaced all our bulbs at once with compact florescents and our electric bill dropped $50 the following month.

4. Live in a dry climate? Buy a swamp cooler. This was our #1 savings in energy and really helped our electric bills.  We live in arid Nevada, so we bought 2 swamp coolers to cool our home with.  We can run them all summer except when we get a few humid weeks in August.  We found on average we saved $100 a month on our electric bill during the hot summer months, and kept our home cooler than we would have been able to with our AC.  Since my husband and I work out of our home, and run a lot of computers, we don’t have the luxury of turning up the temp during the day when you’d typically be gone from home for work, and this was resulting in $300+ a month electric bills.  Now, our electric bills are under $200 even in the hot summer months which has really helped our pocketbook.

5. Use passive heating to heat your home in the winter. One thing we do in the winter is open the drapes for all the windows facing south.  The warmth from the sun coming in the window will help keep those rooms warm during the day.  We are lucky as one whole side of our home faces south.  In the summer, it is shaded with grape vines that grow up lattice on our back porch.  But in the winter, when we want more sun, the leaves are gone letting in my light and heat when we need it.

6. Bring your own shopping bag. It is estimated that between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. Of those, millions end up in the litter stream outside of landfills—estimates range from less than one to three percent of the bags. We are burying ourselves in plastic.  They are cheap to make and easy to fill and when you go to the store and get 20 of them at a time, you don’t think about how many bags are piling up each day.  If you do forget to bring your own bag (and I’m guilty of this at times, although lately I’m much better at remembering) look around your favorite store for a recycle bin.  Many are now putting a “recycle your shopping bags” bin for you to use that will reduce the staggering amounts of bags going into our landfills each year.

I hope these tips get you thinking on ways that you too can save energy and live a greener life.