Use an online photo-sharing site to show-off your newest pics to friends and family instead of printing them out. You could save up to $60 per year or more if you take an average of 30 pictures per month. In addition, you’ll also save the paper, chemical inks and dyes, and energy required to print digital photos. Keeping your photos in digital form, either on a hard drive or CD, makes their storage and transport much easier and more practical than having shelves full of picture albums. They’re also less likely to get lost or destroyed.

If you’re paying someone to walk your dog a few times a week, why not do it yourself?

Save up to $1,800 per year or more if your dog is walked three times per week.

Unless your dogwalker lives down the street, they’re probably driving to your house in order to walk your dog. So when you do it yourself, you save the fuel and the pollution associated with your dogwalker’s transportation.

Good for You: Walking your dog is great exercise for you as well as for your dog. And if you just can’t get yourself up early enough to take the dog for a walk, consider this: people who are active fall asleep more quickly and get better quality sleep than people who are sedentary. So test it out and see if a little morning exercise helps you get your z’s. It may just be a win-win!

Buy used sports equipment instead of ordering everything brand-new. Save up to $300 per year or more depending on the type and quantity of sporting goods purchased. Sporting goods can be expensive because their production is both energy and resource intensive. So when you buy used goods, you’re conserving the inputs that would otherwise go into making new sports equipment. Buying less expensive used goods—and having the option of selling them back—provides you with more financial leeway when your kids are taking up a new sport every week.

Make your own face mask and save up to $20 or more per year over a commercial organic facial mask.

Puree one avocado, 2 teaspoons of plain yogurt, and 2 teaspoons of honey in the blender, or mash in a bowl. Apply to just-washed skin. Avocado has healing qualities: It rejuvenates skin, soothes sunburn, and delivers a dose of antioxidants. Yogurt relieves sunburn and redness, and the lactic acid it contains helps hydrate and smooth. Honey soothes, heals and nourishes, and some say it has anti-microbial, skin-clearing properties.

Invest in laser hair removal instead of waxing. You can save up to $1,500-$2,500 over 10 years of hair removal treatment.

The paraffin wax used for hair removal is derived from petroleum, which is a non-renewable resource, while the electricity used during laser treatment is roughly equivalent to that of a standard light bulb. Getting a laser treatment can achieve permanent hair removal, whereas waxing must be done every five to six weeks

Share a meal with your date and save up to $25 or more.

Simply by sharing a meal you can either prevent food from being wasted, or avoid the burden of carting home an oversized foam to-go box that will inevitably be crammed into an undersized trashcan. Added bonus you’ll have room for dessert! And what’s less romantic than the car stinking of garlic the next morning because you forgot to take in the leftovers?

Buy a vintage diamond instead of a new one. You’ll save all the energy and mining costs associated with bringing a new stone to market. This adds up to a savings of 171 gallons of water, 35 kilowatt hours of electricity, and one gallon of petroleum — per carat.

Send Mom organic flowers instead of the traditional bouquet. If you normally spend $100 on flowers for mom, you could save $60 by going with a smaller organic flower mix. The cost of organic roses starts at about $40 per bouquet.

If every bouquet of flowers purchased for Mother’s Day was organic, we could keep more than 80 tons of pesticides out of our environment per year.

Did you know?

The amount of pesticides applied to conventionally grown roses is up to 1000 times more than the amount applied to conventional food products. This is not only harmful to the growers of the flowers and to soil and water quality, but also potentially harmful to the people who receive them.

Americans spend about $2 billion on flowers for Mother’s Day every year

You should rinse out your recyclables before placing them in the bin

TRUTH

Even though your recyclables will be washed again at the recycling plant before they’re broken down, most curbside collection programs ask that food containers be rinsed out before being placed in the bin. There are three main reasons for this:

1. Cleanliness and efficiency. Imagine working the line on the conveyor belt at the recycling facility and having to deal with a soupy mess of half-drunk cans of soda, jars of pasta sauce, and plastic jugs of spoiled milk. The whole operation flows much more smoothly when residue is kept to a minimum.

2. Avoid contaminating other recyclables. A paper recycler who receives a pallet of paper, some of which is soiled with food from unrinsed recyclables, may refuse the entire load because the paper is now of lower quality and he’ll get a lower price for it from the processor. If a load is rejected, it goes straight to the landfill and the community from which it was collected gets the bill for the disposal costs.

3. Minimize odors and pests. Since your recycling is only picked up once a week, it’s probably advantageous to rinse out substances that might attract ants, flies, or other unwanted wild things.

Now this isn’t to say that you need to scrub your recyclables clean. Just rinse them out with a bit of soapy dishwater after you’ve finished washing your dishes.