This past week was a big one for the Green Team I sponsor at school–our neighborhood finally got recycling (North side of Chicago gets services way before the South side does). At conferences last week, the Green Team had boxes of stuff that people could try sorting correctly for recycling and the parents really liked it. Turnout was low due to the crazy rainstorms but people seemed to enjoy it.
Today’s tip is super easy. Even better than recycling paper is reusing paper (I always write random lists on old envelopes or old assignments). But better still–not creating the paper at all. Are you still receiving paper bills? I’ve switched many of mine to paperless, but I had some holdouts.
Go online and sign up for ebills with email notification. Switching to electronic bills, statements and payments has huge impacts–payitgreen.org says that the average household could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 171 pounds annually. If that means nothing to you, its like…
- Not driving 169 miles
- Not consuming 8.8 gallons of gasoline
- Planting two trees and allowing them to grow for 10 years
- Preserving 24 square feet of forest land
And it’s usually pretty easy* to do. Try to do three that are still showing up in paper form this week!
How many paper bills do you still receive?
*not always. ComEd, there is NO WAY this should be so difficult, take so many steps or require to set up a new type of account (I already have an electronic account).
Want to check out the other Earth Month tips?
homemade•handmade 