Water Your Lawn

Water your lawn less frequently and more deeply and at night in most areas, to avoid evaporation.

Reuse your gray water--the waste water from doing dishes, laundry and showering is fine for watering plants.

Use Cups; Avoid Cans

Buy soft drinks in a cup. Whenever possible, buy soda from a fountain in a paper cup instead of in a can or plastic bottle. You'll reduce the amount of aluminum cans and plastic bottles wasted. More paper (48 percent) is recycled and recovered to make new products than aluminum soda cans (43.9 percent) or plastic soda bottles (25 percent). 

Skip canned fruits and veggies. Whenever possible, limit purchases of canned fruit and vegetables and substitute fresh. The process involved in canning fruit uses 10 times more energy than picking fresh fruit. If every U.S. household replaced just one pound of canned or jarred fruit with one pound of fresh fruit during each summer month, the total energy saved could operate the kitchen appliances of more than 21,000 households for an entire year.

Fresh and Seasonal

Consider purchasing fresh fish instead of canned. You will reduce the amount of resources wasted in the canning process and might even save money. For every 10 pounds of canned fish produced, 20 gallons of water and more than half a pound of edible fish are wasted.

Buy local, seasonal products when available. Food grown or produced halfway around the world didn't just appear in the supermarket—it was shipped by plane, boat, truck or rail, and no matter which method of transportation it used, greenhouse gases were emitted along the way. Pick the apple grown in your state instead of the banana grown in another country.

Cool Down

Set the thermostat to 74 degrees in the summer. Programmable thermostats will reset the house to a higher temperature during the hours you are not at home.

Use ceiling fans to cool down rooms in the summer and to circulate warm air in the winter.