Easy Ways to Go Green

1. Bank Online – Online Banking, BillPay and Paperless Statements  will you save time and money with online services, you’ll help the environment. If every U.S. household stopped receiving paper bills and statements, 687,000 tons of paper would be saved every year.

2. Water at Night
Water your lawn, plants and garden at night to prevent evaporation during the day. Using an automatic watering system set to 2:00 am will save an average household thousands of gallons per year.

3. Use CFL or LED Lightbulbs
At home, replace your light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs. If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an Energy Star qualified bulb, it would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

4. Reuse Bags
Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide. That amounts to over one million per minute. Billions of bags end up in land fills each year. When shopping, bring your own reusable bags. Most grocers offer them for less than $1.50. The reusable bags preserve resources by cutting down on the huge number of paper and plastic bags that are discarded annually.

5. Turn Electronics Off
A screen saver is not an energy saver. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 75% of all electricity consumed in the home is standby power used to keep electronics running when your TVs, DVRs, computers, monitors and stereos are fully set to off. Turning off your computer when not in use would save you about $70 a year. The carbon impact would be even greater; shutting it off would reduce the machine’s carbon emissions by 83%. Unplug to save more and be environmentally friendly.

Pass the Green Torch
Going green with your children is a great way to spend time together, have fun as a family, and develop habits in your children that will benefit the environment for years to come. Check out www.kidsbegreen.org to help your children go (and grow) green. Give your kids the responsibility for your family’s recycling program. Consider matching whatever they earn through recycling. They’ll learn about going green and saving money at the same time.

See the green calculator to tally your savings from reducing paper statements and doing routine business online.