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In the kitchen
 Eat less meat to use less land.
Help your waistline and the planet by replacing one meat meal each week with a vegetarian alternative. You can produce more food with a given patch of land by growing plant foods than you can by grazing cattle or by producing food to raise feed animals, so by eating vegetarian stir-fry versus steak, you’re already making a difference.
Don't rinse your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher.
We had a feeling you'd like this one! Dishwashers are designed to wash dishes so don't waste additional water by rinsing them first. Simply scrape excess food off the dishes and let the machine do the rest. To be even greener, try using 2 teaspoons of baking soda instead of conventional detergent in the dishwasher to clean lightly used dishes.
In the living room
Turn off the TV.
It's estimated that electronics on standby waste more electricity than the amount used by the fridges in Canadian homes. The easy eco-solution? Turn off televisions, VCRs, and computers in standby mode manually. Not sure if you're appliance has a standby mode? If there's no off switch, or if it has a remote control, soft-touch keypad, charges the battery of a portable device, or is warm to touch near the switch when turned off, it probably uses standby power.
In the bathroom
Check for leaks.
While a dripping tap is an obvious sign of water waste, toilets are a little trickier. To see if your toilet cistern (the top bit that stores the water) is leaking, add a few drops of food colouring to the water contained in it. Do not flush the toilet. Wait a few minutes to see if colour appears in the water in the bowl. If it does, the cistern leaks and may have to be replaced.
Improvise a half-flush.
If your toilet doesn't have two flush options, you can still get a half-flush by changing the volume capacity of the cistern. Put a 1.25 litre-filled plastic bottle (a brick will do the trick, too) inside the cistern and save the equivalent volume of water with every flush.
In the bedroom
Use light-coloured linens.
It's estimated that a quarter of all insecticides used globally each year are used to make non-organic cotton. As well, conventional cotton doesn't take dye well so more chemicals are used to dye cotton fabrics and fix the dye. An alternative is to use sheets made from organic cotton or hemp, but if that's unaffordable or inconvenient, just switch to a lighter hue of conventional cotton. This simple choice to avoid dark-coloured bed linen will result in less chemical use and produce less polluted waste water as a result of the dyeing process.
Look under your sheet for heat.
If you're always cold at night, you might want to look at what's going on under your sheets before turning up the thermometer—and no, we're not talking about sex! While extra bedding on top stops heat lost from one side of your body, it doesn't stop heat loss from underneath your body. Try adding a wool underlay, extra blankets, and/or a thicker mattress protector under your bottom sheet for added warmth.
In the laundry room
Don't be blinded by science.
Cleaning clothes is actually very simple. Most stains and spills are made up of tiny solid particles, water-soluble salts and compounds, and/or fats or oils (animal, mineral, or vegetable). While advertising would have you believe you need an arsenal of chemicals to get your clothes clean, the simple truth is that for every modern stain, there's usually a cheaper, less toxic, old-fashioned alternative. Pre-soak heavily stained garments separately and use biodegradeable, phosphate-free products and non-chlorine bleaches.
For more tips on how to bring about measurable environmental change and for more information about Tanya Ha, campaign manager for Australian environmental group Planet Ark, visit the official Planet Ark website.
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