Many hotels ask guests if they want fresh sheets and towels each morning. If you can make do with a change every other day, you'll save water and energy and reduce the wastewater treatment stream.
In one linen reuse program, about 70 percent of guests participated, enabling a hundred-room hotel to reduce its monthly water usage by 48,000 gallons and its detergent usage by 320 gallons.
"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."
A New Leaf. Keep a plant on your desk. House plants can abate rising levels of indoor air pollution at the office. Research from NASA shows that many plants are useful in absorbing harmful gases, cleaning the air in modern buildings.
One visit to a commercial car wash can use 55 gallons or more of water. Wash your own car out of a bucket, fitting the hose with a spray nozzle for rinsing. If you can, park the car on your lawn - the gray water should be harmless, and your lawn will get a free watering.
do your part: If you use a commercial car wash, check to make sure it's one that recycles its water.
Downsizing. If you're not ready to choose a hybrid car, an attractive alternative can be one of the many very small cars now on offer. The VW Rabbit, Honda Fit, Dodge Caliber, Toyota Yaris, Nissan Versa, and Mazda5 are stylish little numbers that get 35 to 40 miles per gallon of gas, compared to a big SUV, which gets about 15 miles to the gallon.
Diversify your portfolio by purchasing stock in companies with sterling environmental records. If you hold shares in firms that could use some improvement, dumping them isn't necessarily the way to go: Instead, vote your proxies to reflect your opinions, and write to management. As a part owner of such companies, you are entitled to be heard. A gadfly can make a difference!
Contemporary "superwindows" employ high-tech solutions -- double panes, low-emissivity glazing, argon or krypton gas between panes -- to block heat transfer. If your house is even a few years old or you're currently building, it's worth considering window replacement.
do your part: These treatments are admittedly pricey, and the payback period can last as long as 15 to 20 years. But if superwindows were in full use nationwide, the U.S. could save four million barrels of oil and gas per day.
Reduce the amount of clothing you buy and ultimately discard by dressing your children in hand me downs. Resist the pressure to follow every style trend in children's clothing; since they grow out of things so fast, the only way to get efficient use out of an item is to stretch it out among siblings or across generations. You can also sharpen up your sewing skills to make clothes last longer.
Bulletin boards are passe'. Some offices are notorious for a near-plague of printed announcements and notices. To save paper, consign less-than-urgent memos to bulletin-board postings, or issue them via e-mail.
Don't toss the crop of old clothes yielded by spring cleaning. Contributions to thrift shops and other donation centers cut solid waste and may be tax deductible. And these days, you never know; that old college T-shirt you give away could end up clothing a needy person somewhere on the other side of the globe.
