Simple tips to fight climate change — at home, work, school and on the go.
Discover more tips to help you live sustainably:
Banish bottled water
Producing just one plastic bottle of water — including transporting and refrigerating it — requires 2,000 times as much energy as producing the same amount of tap water. It also creates massive amounts of plastic waste. Save money and keep plastic out of landfills and oceans by carrying a reusable bottle instead.
Reclaim the road
The private car is one of the most carbon-intensive habits in modern life — and one of the most normalized. Whenever you can replace a car trip with a walk, a bike ride or public transit, do it. And if you drive, make your next car electric.
Borrowing beats buying
For items you’ll use once or infrequently — luggage for a business trip, say, or a sleeping bag for a camping trip — borrow from a friend instead of buying one brand new. The less you buy new, the less waste you’ll create and the more you’ll reduce your carbon footprint.
Protect the parks
Wild places are not passive backdrops. Foot traffic erodes trails, crowds stress wildlife and common products — sunscreen, bug spray — can be toxic to aquatic ecosystems. Visit with intention: choose off-peak times, stay on marked paths and research what you bring before you go.
Compost food scraps
Trashed food ends up in a landfill, where it rots and emits methane — a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes more to global warming than CO2. Toss your leftovers in a compost bin instead. They’ll emit no methane, and you’ll reduce the energy needed to haul your garbage to the dump. And if you’re a gardener, adding compost to your soil will enrich it while increasing moisture retention, reducing the amount of watering you’ll need to do.
Dial down your heat or A/C when you’re away
Adjusting your thermostat 7 to 10 degrees (higher during the summer, lower during the winter) for eight hours each day will yield up to a 10 percent savings on your annual energy bill and help shrink your carbon footprint. Go a step further by adding insulated window curtains to block drafts in the winter and sunlight in the summer.
Dine in instead of eating out
Most of the energy used by the average restaurant goes toward things like sanitation, refrigeration and lighting, while only 35 percent goes toward preparing your meal. Cut some fat from your carbon footprint — and save a bit of money — by eating at home instead.
Downsize your travel wardrobe
The heavier passengers’ bags are, the more energy the plane needs to lift all that luggage. Here’s one easy way to reduce the carbon footprint of your flight: Pack a lighter checked bag or just a carry on. While on your trip, take note of what you didn’t use and jot down a few ideas for how you could save suitcase space on your next trip.
Get a solar charger for your phone
Over the course of a year, a traditional wall charger uses about 7 KWh of energy to charge your phone (assuming you plug it in every day), and a plugged-in charger uses energy even when it’s not charging anything. With more than four billion smartphones in the world, that’s billions of watts of electricity that could be saved if everyone switched to solar chargers, which simply need to be placed near a sunny spot in your home.
Keep your phone longer
The environmental cost of a smartphone is almost entirely in its manufacture: mining rare earth elements, building components, shipping the finished device. That's 80 to 95 percent of its lifetime emissions, before you ever turn it on. Resist the automatic upgrade.
Grow something
Growing even a small amount of your own food — herbs on a windowsill, tomatoes in a pot, vegetables in a backyard bed — builds something harder to quantify than emissions savings: a direct relationship with soil, water and the systems that feed us. That understanding is where conservation begins.
Know your farmer
The distance your food travels is one measure of its environmental cost — but it's not the only one. Buying locally, directly from farmers, also means knowing how your food was raised: whether the soil was tended or depleted, whether animals were treated humanely, whether your money supports a working landscape or an industrial operation. Community Supported Agriculture programs (CSAs) make this easy — a seasonal subscription that connects you directly to a farm, its practices, and the people behind it.
Multiply Your Impact
Your support reaches further than you think.
Every private donation helps unlock additional funding from governments, foundations, and institutional partners — multiplying impact by up to 300%
Offset your flight
Airline jets emit more CO2 per kilometer than cars or trains, and the aviation industry accounts for 2 percent of global emissions. The next time you fly, neutralize or offset these emissions by retiring carbon credits that are used to protect natural areas that store CO2 and keep it out of our atmosphere. Start by visiting our flight carbon calculator.
Opt for refurbished electronics
If you’re in the market for a new phone or computer, consider picking up a refurbished unit. You’ll keep at least one device from languishing in a landfill while reducing the environmental impact posed by manufacturing and shipping a new unit from overseas. If your device is damaged beyond repair, a little research should point you to the right place to properly recycle it.
Pull the plug on your devices
Thanks to standby mode, electronic devices consume power even when they are turned off. Almost 10 percent of your energy bill goes toward this “phantom power” consumption. Save money — and reduce your carbon footprint — by unplugging your devices at the end of the day or when they’re not in use.
Dispose with care
Batteries, electronics and medications don't belong in the trash. When they end up in landfills, the chemicals they contain leach into soil and water with serious consequences for ecosystems and human health. Most local governments run collection programs for hazardous household waste — check yours. For hard-to-recycle items, platforms like TerraCycle offer mail-in options.
Retire your dryer
Consider using a drying rack whenever possible instead of throwing your clothes in the dryer. You’ll save money, save energy and prolong the life of your clothes.
Go solar
Drawing power from the sun is completely emission-free — unlike more traditional sources like coal and gas. In fact, you can cut up to 1.6 tons of carbon emissions annually just by installing a solar panel system in your home. Plus, you can save money on your energy bill (and you might be eligible for tax credits).
Showering beats soaking
A five-minute shower uses 10 to 25 gallons of water, whereas a bath can use up to 70 gallons of water. Even a 10-minute shower uses less water than a typical bath. Each time you opt for a shower over a bath, you'll save water and the energy required to heat those extra gallons of tub water. Install a waterproof timer on your shower wall to challenge yourself to take shorter showers.
Sip smarter
Billions of disposable coffee cups are trashed each year, and, thanks to their polyethylene linings, most are unrecyclable. The next time you head to the coffee shop, bring a reusable cup. Do you order via an app? We hear you, saving time is great — but consider the cost to the planet.
Don’t buy wildlife
Souvenirs made from ivory, tortoiseshell, reptile skin, coral or exotic fur may look like local crafts, but they come from animals that were killed or harvested to make them — and in most cases, illegally. Wildlife trafficking is one of the most destructive forces driving species toward extinction, worth tens of billions of dollars a year. Every purchase, however small, keeps that market alive.
Switch to better bulbs
Ninety percent of the electricity used by incandescent light bulbs is given off as heat, which is wasted energy and money. Here’s a bright(er) idea: Switch to LEDs, CFLs or halogen bulbs instead. They use as little as 20 percent of the electricity — reducing your energy bill and your carbon footprint.
Stay in sustainable lodging
Where you stay on vacation has an environmental footprint too. When booking accommodation, look for hotels with LEED certification — a rigorous standard that measures energy efficiency, water use and waste reduction.
Steer clear of steer
Go meat-free — especially avoiding beef — at least one day each week. Beef is not great for the planet: Production of one quarter-pound burger requires 460 gallons of water and emits 0.126 pounds of methane — a greenhouse gas roughly 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Globally, about 15 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are due to livestock, nearly two thirds of which come from cattle.
Wash your clothes in cold water
About 90 percent of the energy used by your washing machine simply goes toward heating the water. Save that energy — and around $40 each year — by washing full loads in cold water instead.
Why fly?
At 285 grams of CO2 emitted per kilometer per passenger, air travel is more energy intensive than traveling by road (158 grams) or rail (14 grams). If you can, drive or take the train instead. And if you have to fly, fly direct. No layovers.
Upgrade to rechargeable batteries
Are you still using old-fashioned, single-use, alkaline batteries in devices like your TV’s remote control? Try rechargeable batteries instead. You’ll save money over time and help cut down on the billions of dollars worth of batteries sold each year in the United States, most of which never see a recycling facility. And for dead batteries collecting dust in your drawer: Drop them off at a local recycling that accepts them (be sure to check regulations and restrictions first). Just don’t toss them in the trash!