1. Don’t use paper/throwaway items for household cleaning. Paper towels, paper napkins, disposable wipes, disposable dusting cloths… the list goes on and on. If you total it up, paper products can contribute a significant portion of your grocery bill per week. Buying a pack of cloth washcloths or kitchen towels can cut down on this hugely. Target, for example, sells a pack of 12 washcloths for $3. You can use these for any sort of cleaning/dusting or as napkins and then just wash them at the end of the week so they are fresh again.

2. Shop local markets. Most grocery chains import their items from the cheapest source. This means your produce can come from any place around the world and your meat comes from large factory farms. Local markets (usually run once a week) bring local farmers and local shoppers together and cut out the middle man. You can buy directly from the farmers and items are usually fresher and cheaper than any chain could offer.

3. Pack your lunch. Having lunch delivered or getting take out is very common in offices. If you take a step back and count the number of items used to package your lunch, you’ll be amazed. A sandwich at a local deli can come packed in a styrofoam container with a thin sheet of paper and a toothpick wrapped around it. Your side dish might be in a separate plastic or styrofoam container and all of that is put in to a plastic bag with paper napkins and plastic utensils that are also probably wrapped in a smaller plastic bag. That’s a lot of packaging just for one lunch! Bringing your lunch in reusable containers saves you a ton of money ($5-10 per day!) and there’s no packaging waste. Grab a set of metal utensils and some cloth napkins and you’ll never need to throw any lunch-related items away again. (Glue and Glitter makes adorable lunch kits!)

4. Reuse your junk mail. Even if you opt out of credit card offers and ask companies to refrain from sending you junk mail, chances are you will still get some unsolicited mail. Take advantage of this to reuse what’s sent to you. No need to buy a notepad to make shopping lists! You have the backs of all those envelopes! Need to leave a note for someone at home while you run to the store? How about the flip side of that pre-paid credit card offer letter you got just yesterday? There are a lot of different ways to put that sort of thing to use. The talented a bardis takes the patterned insides of security envelopes and turns them in to lovely 1 inch buttons!

5. Walk, use public transit, and carpool as much as possible. Here in Atlanta, public transportation is not ideal, but it is available. With a little bit of planning, you can often take a train or walk to your destination. If that’s not possible, try and catch a ride or offer to take others with you if you have to drive. With the steady climb of gas prices, one person per car per trip is getting less and less practical and the environmental impact is huge. The example of the peppered moth is well known, but it’s still incredible to me that because of pollution produced by humans, an entire species of moth changed color due to natural selection over time.

~Liz