In honor of Earth Day...

How to be Eco-Friendlier
by lekkq, arie, elisabeth, gateau

1. Don’t use your hot tools every day. Not only is it good for your hair, it saves electricity!
2. Invest in rechargeable batteries. They’re like 30$ at first but they pay for themselves in like 2 months.
3. Recycle. Talk to your school about recycling bottles. Set up a mini recyclable bin for paper you’re tossing. A meter wide cardboard box doesn’t take up much space and only needs to be emptied once a month. And you can decorate it to look pretty!
4. Try to bring your own tote when shopping. You can fit a surprising amount in. Today in my bucket purse I fit two sweaters, a pair of pants and a little extra. If you do take plastic bags try to find creative ways to use them. Especially if you have a dog… haha. I use my plastic bags to line my garbage can in my room to make sure nothing icky gets stuck to the bottom.
5. Set up a mini compost in your room. I’m not talking fruits and what, ew that’d stink.. but take like a paper shopping bag and put all of the stuff that doesn’t go in recyclable but can compost.. like Kleenex or extra little scraps of fabric.
6. In NS we have compost bins, I don’t know if that happens everywhere. See if you can make a community compost pit. Talk to your mayor about composting. Usually even one letter (on recycled paper, haha) can generate results.
7. Buy vintage. It definitely helps. And donate your old stuff. Value Village takes almost anything.
   
8. Try to buy local fruit. Organic for extra points. So worth it!
9. Buy those 5-year energy efficient light bulbs
   
10. Try to avoid using Styrofoam, it isn't biodegradable.
11. WALK. Wherever you can. Carpool! The less cars you take, the less gas you waste. Take the train, subway, bus etc. at least one way.
    Optional: take pictures of yourself with sulky faces using your rechargeable batteries and be scenester cool.
12. Stop smoking. You don't really need your very own personal hole in the o-zone layer.
13. Let the air out of random Hummers tires! Kidding, kidding. But hummers and big SUVS make me angry because they get such bad gas mileage.
14. Lower the temp in your house by a few degrees
15. Limit use of hot water when you take showers or whatever, it takes lots of energy to heat water up