This page will show you some of the simple ways you can reduce your footprint, and then some of the more involved ones. You can refer to the table of contents to find a specific action.

Inspire Others!

The best thing you can do is inspire others to help. If you inspire one person, you have doubled your positive impact on the planet. If you inspire four people, you have quintupled it. If you inspire 100 people, you are awesome.

But of course, this action is virtually useless if you don’t do anything else. You cannot expect other people to do stuff you yourself are not doing. Lead by example.

Put a Brick in your Toilet Tank

Putting a brick in your toilet tank displaces water which makes less clean water get literally flushed down the toilet.

Turn Off the Water When You Brush Your Teeth

Leaving the tap running while you brush your teeth can waste up to 9 litres of water per minute. Which could add up to 26,000 litres of water per family, per year. According to WeAreWhatWeDo, your street alone could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool with all the water they waste each year. So turn off the water when you brush your teeth!

Walk to School (or Bike or Take Transit)

Walking or biking are great because they have zero carbon emmissioons, and they are forms of excercise, so you get healthier. It’s a two for one deal: Health for you and health for the planet.

A bus carries the same number of people as 50 cars, meaning it saves 49 times the amount of carbon dioxide.

Compost When You Can

Just a little more effort to make the landfill less full.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair

Ever heard of the four Rs? Reduce the amount of STUFF you’ve got, Reuse whetaver you can (print on both sides of the paper, bonus for greywater reutilization), Recycle stuff when you can, and Repair before you recycle.

Take 5-minute Showers

Or less, obviously, just not more.

Turn Down the Thermostat

For every degree that you turn down the thermostat, you can save about 50 dollars a year. More than enough to buy an extra sweater.

Find Your Carbon Footprint

Here is one of the best quick footprint calculators: http://www.myfootprint.org/. Finding your carbon footprint, even if it isn’t perfectly accurate, helps you become more aware of how you can green your lifestyle.

Turn Off Unnecessary Lights

When you don’t need lights, why leave them on?  All that they do is harm the environment and drain money out of your family’s pocket.

Turn Off The Heat When You are On Vacation or Away for a Long While

Just like having unnecessary lights on, why have your heat on when your not there to use it?

Pick Up Litter

Plastic can take 10,000 years to break down. Just think about it; in 10,000 years the sidewalks and roads around you will have long since worn away, but your candy wrapper may still be there. Or it could be in the middle of the ocean, or causing some form of wildlife to suffocate.

Don’t Water Your Lawn (If You Do, Do it in the Evening)

If you water your lawn very early in the morning or in the evening the water won’t evaporate so your lawn will need less water. Of course, don’t over-water your lawn or water it during rain. And obviously not having a lawn or not watering it saves a good deal of trouble!

Avoid Over-Packaged Products

All that landfill stuffing is best avoided. Some companies make specially minimized-packaging products, like the ECO PAC from Nature’s Path.

Join a Letter-Writing Campaign

One letter usually will not change anything on it’s own. But it 1000 people write original letters about an issue, those stubborn politicians are gonna have to pay attention…

Bring Your Own Cup/Container

Bring your own mug for your hot chocolate, bring your own chopsticks to your favorite restraunt, or use you imagination and bring your own container for something else. Canada alone uses over eight billion disposable cups per year. And tons more of other disposable things. Do you want to change that?

Don’t Overfill Your Kettle

Heating up more water than you need wastes lots of electricity, and takes longer. So don’t.

Hang Your Washing up to Dry

One dryer load uses enough energy to make 250 pieces of toast. (but you don’t need to use all the energy that you save on toast)

Bring Your Own Bag

Re-use a plastic bag.

Bring a tote bag.

Carry your own stuff when you can.

And you will have subtracted one from the 8 billion plastic bags used in Canada alone.

Now do it again, and again, and again, and again…

Buy Stuff Locally

Look at all the ways this is awesome:

• You will support local (sometimes family-run) buisnesses, artisans, and farmers.
• You get fresher, often organic produce, items that last for a longer time (not to mention lack of built-in obsolecence), and other quality bonuses.
• Your choice as a consumer influences the market of the future.
• Everything will taste better, and or be more fun because you will know that you did the right thing.

Plant a Tree (Or More)

One tree can provide enough oxygen for two people, over their entire lifetimes. As long as it doesn’t get cut down.

Change a Lightbulb

If you thin six bucks is too much for a lightbulb, then notice that over it’s lifetime that lightbulb could save you at least $130. And the planet, without which $6 would be quite useless. In fact, if all 12 million households in Canada replaced 16, 60-watt incandescent lightbulbs with 15-watt compact fluorescent lightbulbs, it would reduce the same amount of greenhouse-gas emissions as taking 1 million cars off the road.

But now we know that LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) are WAY more efficient than compact fluorescents. Also they are not chock full of highly toxic chemicals.