Buy Holiday Gifts Online
Get your shopping done in the peace and comfort of your own home by buying gifts for friends and family over the Web.
Many retailers offer discounts or coupon codes that can save you 10% or more for online purchases—or up to at least $80 this holiday season for the average shopper.
If you know what you want to buy—or better yet your gift recipients have set-up “wish lists” on Amazon.com or some other online marketplace—you’ll save the many hours you’d otherwise spend in packed-out shops and discount stores.
If you could eliminate 30 miles of shopping mall trips this holiday season by buying online, you’d save about a gallon of gas and 20 pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere
If every household did this, we’d collectively save over 100 million gallons of gas and 2 billion pounds of CO2—equivalent to taking nearly 175,000 cars off the road.
Hotel Linens
Use the same linens and towels in your hotel room throughout your stay. You probably don’t change your sheets and towels every day at home, so why do it while you’re away? The average hotel room consumes more than two hundred gallons of water per day, or as much as your entire household typically uses in a day. Trimming the amount of water used by washing sheets and towels can save up
to 40 percent of a hotel’s water use.
PRINT ONLY THE PAGES YOU NEED
Try to make a habit of reformatting your documents before you click the printer icon. More often than not, margins or font-sizes can be modified slightly to save on paper. Or at the least, do a print preview of your document and print only the pages you need.
If you could eliminate just five pages of printed material per workday, you’ll be able to save your office roughly $25 per year in paper and ink cartridge costs.
If every office worker made this shift we’d save enough paper to preserve 7.5 million trees!
Shoes
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You can reduce the size of your footprint on the environment by purchasing shoes made from recycled materials. Look for soles made from postconsumer tire rubber, insoles made from foam cushions, or canvas made from old jackets or jeans. Your new footprint could represent the reuse and recycling of almost anything from soda bottles, foam cups, milk jugs, cardboard, and magazines to denim, coffee filters, file folders, cork, blankets, and burlap sacks. If every American household purchased one pair of shoes made from recycled materials, the savings could total more than two hundred million pounds of waste diverted from landfills.
WIPE OUT PAPER NAPKINS
Reduce waste and save money by using cloth instead of paper napkins. With normal use, napkins can be reused for a couple of days before they’re thrown in with the regular wash. Keep things straight by assigning each member of your family a designated napkin ring or napkin color.
A household of four that replaces paper napkins with reusable cloth ones could save $70 per year or more on napkin costs, and reduce their waste by up to 40 pounds per year.
If every household made this shift, we could prevent 1.5 million tons of paper napkin waste from entering the landfill each year.
POWER DOWN
Take a minute to shut-down the computers in your office each evening after work instead of leaving them on continuously throughout the night.
Making this shift means each computer will run for about 6,500 fewer hours per year, equaling an energy savings of about $95 per computer.
If every office computer in the country were to be turned off at night, U.S. businesses would save a total of nearly $2 billion per year in energy costs, and enough energy to shut-down five coal-fired power plants.
DISCS
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Use Blu-ray Discs if you can. The format offers more than five times the storage cpacity of traditional compact discs. Bul-ray Discs are half-made of paper, so they can even be shredded, making them easier to dispose of and recycle than traditional CD’s
FILL ‘ER UP
It’s great if you use your automatic dishwasher regularly, but you can realize extra savings if you only run it when the racks are full.
If it takes a day or two to fill the racks and you’re worried that soiled dishes might start to smell, you can run the rinse-only cycle to keep things fresh using very little water.
If by running full loads you’re able to cut-back on one wash cycle per week, you’ll save more than 300 gallons of hot water per year—or about $5 on your utility bill.
If everyone who owns a dishwasher did this we’d save 23 billion gallons of hot water per year.
JUNK MAIL
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Rid yourself of junk mail—or at least recycle it. The average U.S. household receives 1.5 trees’ worth of junk mail each year, and many of these trees are thrown right into the trash. If you want to reduce the amount of junkmail you receive, you’ll need to register with the Mail Preference Service. It costs a buck, but you can do it easily online at www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist. For the junk mail you continue to receive, remember to toss it in the recycling bin instead of throwing it out with the garbage. You can even recycle plastic window envelopes. If all Americans recycled their junk mail, $370 million in landfill dumping fees could be saved each year.
GET ON THE RAG
Instead of using disposable paper or cloth towels to clean mirrors, countertops, furniture, and floors, designate a few washable cloths that can be reused over and over again.
You’ll save an average of $15 per year on paper towel purchases, and prevent up to 10 pounds of waste from entering the landfill.
If every household made the shift to using washable cloths for cleaning and reduced their paper towel usage by just three rolls per year, together we could save 190 million pounds of paper towel waste per year.
Candles
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Because paraffin wax candles are made from petroleum and release the equivalent of diesel exhaust when burned, you can save fossil fuel resources, improve your indoor air quality, and reduce your exposure to carcinogens by choosing 100 percent beeswax or soy candles. These candles are not only made from renewable resources, but burn 90 percent cleaner and at least 50 percent longer than conventional paraffin candles. The crude oil used to make just one sixteen-ounce paraffin candle contains enough energy to power a sixty-watt light bulb for one hundred hours. If just one in a hundred households replaced an eight-ounce petroleum-based candle with a soy or beeswax candle, the energy saved could keep the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center lit 24/7 from Thanksgiving until the Fourth of July.
Reduce wasted food at Thanksgiving dinner
Do your eyes tend to be bigger than your stomach? When loading your plate this Thanksgiving, try to pile-up only as much as you think you’ll realistically eat.
You could save about $5-10 on wasted food, and you’ll probably feel better at the end of the evening.
It may not seem like a lot, but every little bite left on the plate adds-up. For example, one bite of turkey with gravy, a tablespoon of mashed potatoes, and a spoonful of cranberry sauce for every person in the country would add up to 38 million pounds of edible food—or enough to provide a Thanksgiving meal for every person in the U.S. living below the poverty line.
Bread—Dinner
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If possible, buy your dinner breads fresh from the grocery store bakery. You can recycle the paper wrapper and save on energy used for freezing and transporting the shelf-bought brands. If every U.S. household served fresh-baked bread instead of packaged rolls for Thanksgiving dinner, the energy conserved could fly more than twenty-three thousand early colonists from England to Plymouth Rock.
Avoid XXL Thanksgiving Turkeys
Resist the urge to buy the largest tom in the freezer bin—especially if you’re cooking for a relatively small number of people or if the leftovers are just going to go to waste.
Buying a smaller bird for a smaller gathering reduces oven energy requirements and saves cooking time, and could save you $10-$15 if you’re buying it by the pound.
If one percent of the households in the United States could reduce their turkey baking times this holiday by just 25 percent, the total amount of energy saved could heat the homes of 100,000 football fans throughout the Cowboys-Raiders game on Thanksgiving night.
You Say Tomato…
If your edible garden is anything like the ones we at Shift Your Habit have planted this year, you’ve got more tomatoes than you (and your friends and neighbors) know what to do with.
So as opposed to letting the extras rot on the vine (or, worse yet, on the counter) we thought it might be fun (and helpful) to test some super easy tomato-based dishes we’ve come across this summer and then give you our top picks. After all, everyone needs a little inspiration once in a while.
Straight from our own kitchens and dining room tables, here are some simply delicious recipes for tackling your backyard bounty.
Roasted Cherry Tomatoes & Olives on Bowties (Serves 4)
www.weelicious.com
25 Cherry Tomatoes
1 Clove Garlic, minced
2 Tsp Olive Oil
1 Tsp Fresh Thyme or 1/4 Dried Thyme
1/2 Tsp Salt
1/3 Cup Kalamata Olives, pitted and halved
8 oz Farfalle (Bowtie) Pasta (about 1/2 a bag or box)
1/4 Cup Parmesan Cheese
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 2. Toss the first 5 ingredients together on a sheet tray to coat the tomatoes. 3. Bake for 25 minutes or until tomatoes are starting to burst. 4. While the tomatoes are baking, cook the pasta in salted water according to the package directions. 5. Combine the tomatoes, pasta, olives and cheese and toss to combine. 6. Serve.
Tomato-Cucumber Salad (Serves 4)
www.mywoodenspoon.com
4 Medium Tomatoes, diced or sliced the way you want them
2 Medium Cucumbers, peeled and sliced
½ White or Red Onion, thinly sliced and separated into rings
2 Tbsp. Vinegar
¼ Cup Olive Oil
2 Tbsp Sugar
2 Tsp Fresh Parsley, minced
1 Tsp Salt
½ Tsp Fresh Ground Black Pepper
1. In one bowl, combine sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions. 2. Mix remaining ingredients in a separate container before pouring on to salad. 3. Toss salad until vegetables are evenly coated. 4. Marinate for two hours. 5. Serve.
Tomato and Herb Salad (Serves 6)
www.cdkitchen.com
8 Tomatoes, cut in chunks
1 Clove Garlic, minced
5 Basil Leaves, chopped
½ Tsp Salt
½ Tsp Sugar
½ Tsp Pepper
½ Tsp Fresh Oregano, minced
1 Tsp Cider Vinegar
2 Tsp Olive Oil
1. Mix all ingredients. 2. Serve.
CLEAN GREEN
Choose household products that are good for cleaning, but won’t harm your health or the environment.
There are a number of non-toxic cleaners on the market that are priced comparably to the conventional cleaners, but that use plant-based ingredients instead of the bleach and petroleum-derived solvents that can lead to health and environmental effects.
If you’d like to avoid commercial products all together, you could save about $25 per year by making your own cleaning solutions out of vinegar, baking soda, castile soap, cornstarch, and lemon juice. For recipes check out the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition at www.checnet.org/HealtheHouse/education/articles-detail.asp?Main_ID=564
If every household replaced one bottle of toxic cleaner with a homemade or non-toxic variety, we would collectively save about 25 million gallons of chemicals out of our homes and bodies.
NEWSPAPERS
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Subscribe to and recycle your newspapers. Newspaper subscribers can save about 50 percent off the cover price, as well as a trip to the newsstand. Each year, ten million tons of newspapers are still tossed into landfills and aren’t recycled. If just half of these were recycled, it would save seventy-five million trees.
HANDS OFF
If you own an automatic dishwasher but are still washing dishes by hand, you’re losing a considerable amount of time (and money) each night hunched over the sink of dying suds while your raisin-fingers scrub off the likes of dried-on pasta and spaghetti sauce.
By shifting your habit and using the dishwasher instead—which for the average family amounts to about four loads per week—you’ll save roughly 232 hours, 4,515 gallons of water, and roughly $32 in reduced energy and water costs per year.
If every household who currently owns a dishwasher they don’t use made this shift we’d save 47 billion gallons of water per year—enough to provide 15 oz. per day to each of the 1.1 billion people in the world who lack safe drinking water
BIKE TO WORK
If you live within a few miles of your job, consider biking to work instead of driving. You could save up to $270, 68 gallons of gas, and reduce your vehicle mileage by 1,500 miles per year, just by commuting 10 miles roundtrip by bike three times per week. You might also shed those extra pounds you’ve been trying to lose.
If every American with a commute of five miles or less could save just 25 gallons per year by biking to work, the collective savings would equal more than 750 gallons of gasoline per year.
RECYCLE
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If everyone in America simply separated the paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum products from the trash and tossed them into a recycling bin, we could decrease the amount of waste sent to landfills by 75 percent. Currently, it takes an area the size of Pennsylvania to dump all our waste each year.
FUEL DOWN
If you are planning to go on a road trip this summer take advantage of the cruise control feature on your car. By using cruise control when driving long-distances on the open highway, you could save $80 annually at the pump. By squeezing a few more mpg from your gas tank you’ll forego nearly two fill-ups per year.
If every U.S. household began using cruise control on road trips, the savings would equal more than 2 billion gallons of gas per year—as much as we’d save if 45,000 SUV owners traded in their gas guzzlers for hybrid cars.
Soda
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h3. If you have the choice, buy soda from the fountain in a paper cup instead of from a can or plastic bottle. You’ll reduce the amount of aluminum cans and plastic bottles that are 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).
NATURAL LIGHT IS RIGHT
If you’ve got windows in a room, you’ve probably got some natural light shining in.
So instead of turning on the lights during the day, try using natural light instead. You could save about $15 in energy costs per year—not to mention the costs of replacement bulbs.
If we all made this shift we could save enough energy to light 13 million homes for a year.
Dinnertime Shifts: Start A Family Meal Plan
We’re all susceptible to the temptation of fast-food meals. They require no preparation and no energy. They’re chemically engineered to taste addictively delicious, and they seem—on the surface at least—to be the cheapest and easiest way to feed the family after a long day’s work.
Unfortunately, when you really tear it apart, fast food has almost no redeeming qualities. It lacks nutrition, it’s high in calories and saturated fats, and it leaves you feeling weighed down and unsatisfied. And it’s many times more expensive than a home-cooked meal. The only thing fast food has going for it is that it’s, well, fast.
You may not believe it, but you can make very quick meals at home that can rival the taste of fast food while packing the necessary vitamins, protein, and fiber that your family needs to stay healthy. Depending on your willingness to be regimented, it can take a little bit of planning if you want lots of variety. But you’ll soon realize that with the time and money you’re saving, the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Here are some tips for how to make this work:
1. Plan your meals for the entire month by creating a meal calendar.
2. Choose meals that can be prepared ahead of time—like on weekends—and reheated, or meals with leftovers that can be repurposed into other meals.
3. Choose meals with similar ingredients that can be prepared simultaneously.
4. Make grocery lists that correspond to the ingredients you need in each meal, and buy all groceries on one shopping day per week.
5. Plan meals according to seasonality of fresh produce. When produce is in season, it’s more likely to be grown locally, and it’s typically less expensive.
So what types of meals are we talking about here? Here’s an example:
Penne Pasta With Whatever You Want (Makes 6 meals for 4 people)
3 lb. Penne Pasta
1 jar Marinara or Spaghetti Sauce
4 oz. Fresh Spinach
1 jar Alfredo Sauce
2 chopped chicken breasts (cooked)
2 large fresh tomatoes (diced)
10 leaves basil (chopped)
2 cloves garlic (minced)
2 tbsp olive oil
Cook pasta according to directions in large stock pot, minus 1 minute. Drain and rinse. Pasta can be refrigerated for about 5 days, or frozen for up to 3 weeks.
Combine 1/3 cooked and thawed pasta with marinara and fresh spinach. Heat in a pot or skillet. Serve with French bread. Leftovers can be reheated for another meal.
Combine 1/3 cooked and thawed pasta with Alfredo sauce and chopped cooked chicken. Heat in a pot or skillet. Serve with salad. Leftovers can be reheated for another meal.
Reheat 1/3 cooked and thawed pasta. Toss with chopped fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, and olive oil. Serve with parmesan cheese and French bread. Leftovers can be reheated for another meal.
Total Cost for 6 meals: $15-$20
Time: 35 minutes
For more ideas and information on strategic meal planning, check out Families With A Purpose
Pet Treats
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h3. If you buy pet treats with no packaging or in packaging that can be recycled, you will prevent a pound or more of plastic from entering landfills each year. If 10 percent of all dog and cat owners purchased pet treats in recyclable packaging, more than fifty-eight thousand cubic yards of waste
would be eliminated annually. If this waste were packed into a standard three-acre dog park, it would tower more than twelve feet high.
AT THE CAR WASH
Save time and water by taking your car through a commercial car wash instead of washing it with a hose and bucket in your driveway.
If you’re used to washing your car about once a month, you could save roughly 6 hours and more than 800 gallons of water per year.
You may also be able to save money with this shift by taking advantage of special offers: Like a free car wash on your birthday or a discounted car wash when you fill up your gas tank.
Showering
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If you routinely shower before work in the morning and then again after your evening visit to the gym, consider switching to a morning workout and showering just once a day. You’ll save about two hundred gallons of water for each shower you subtract from your schedule. Over the course of a year, you could save more than thirty thousand gallons of water—enough to fill a twenty-by-forty-foot backyard swimming pool.
MEAT LESS
Let’s face it. Going completely vegetarian isn’t for everyone. But if you’re looking to align your eating habits with your concern for the environment, you can do a lot of good by cutting back on the amount of meat you consume.
Eating meat not only costs more per pound than potatoes, lentils or rice, but raising livestock also consumes more energy, land and water, and produces more pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
If you were to cut meat out of your diet once a week and replace it with a vegetarian option, you could save about $200 per year for a family of four.
If every U.S. household made this shift, we could save the energy equivalent of 13 million gallons of petroleum per year.
Ghoulishly Great Grub
If your plans this weekend involve carving a jack-o-lantern, make sure you don’t throw out those slimy innards. Instead, separate the seeds from the orange flesh and make yourself a tasty treat.
Fresh roasted pumpkin seeds are not only totally delicious (especially if you get creative with your seasonings) and easy to make, they’re also packed with nutrients, protein, fiber, and the good fats that help to lower cholesterol. Try this simple recipe.
Ingredients
2 cups pumpkin seeds
2 teaspoons canola or olive oil
Salt to taste
1 tbsp. spicy twist (optional)
Directions
(1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (2) Mix pumpkin seeds with oil and salt. (3) Add additional spices (if desired). (4) Spread pumpkin seeds in a single layer on baking sheet. (5) Bake for 20 minutes, until the seeds are crisp, stirring every few minutes. (6) Remove from the oven and re-season to taste (if desired).
Spicy Twists (optional)
• Barbecue seasoning
• Cinnamon and sugar
• Garlic powder
• Paprika
• Parmesan cheese and thyme
• Brown sugar and nutmeg
Used Vehicles
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If you buy a used vehicle instead of a new one, you’ll help save energy as well as over 2,150 pounds of steel. Nine percent of the energy used by a car over its lifetime is consumed in the manufacturing process. If one in a hundred potential new-car buyers chose to purchase a used car instead, the amount of steel saved annually could reconstruct the Golden Gate Bridge—twice a year.
AMERICAN IDLE
Try to limit the amount of time your car sits with the engine running. This means avoiding drive-thrus and turning off the car when you’re parked waiting for the kids or making a quick run into the supermarket. After all, if your vehicle isn’t moving, your gas mileage is 0 mpg.
If you cut just six minutes of idling from your daily driving routine you’ll save about $55 worth of gasoline per year.
If every U.S. driver made this shift we’d save close to 3 billion gallons of gasoline per year—nearly enough to fill every gas tank in the country!
DAILY SHIFTS