Living green doesn’t mean you have to wave goodbye to all the niceties and luxuries of modern life. In fact, once you start to investigate the advantages of living a greener life, you may well discover all sorts of extra pleasures. Your taste buds will certainly notice and it’s highly likely your wallet will as well.

There are plenty of things you can do which will help you to live green without total sacrifice. Here are seven tips that are quick and easy for you to implement. Most of them will barely change the way you operate but will help save the environment, especially if you can gradually persuade your friends to do the same things.

1. Re-use the bags you get every time you shop are good for more than one trip. Re-use them or, better yet, buy a “bag for life” and use that. Collectively, we use millions of plastic bags on a daily basis. Saving a couple bags here and there may not seem to make a difference, but as more and more people do this, the savings will mount up.

2. Re-cycle as much as you can. You probably already have a recycling collection service. If not, look out for recycling places local to you and drop off your newspapers, bottles, cans, etc next time you are passing. Don’t make a special trip though. For larger items, if they’re still usable then look up Freecycle for your local area. They offer a great way to give unwanted items a new, welcoming home.

3. Eat local produce. Especially if it’s bought fresh from a Farmer’s Market. You’ll notice the difference in taste. And if you buy just what you need (rather than the supersize pack your grocery store normally sells) it probably won’t cost much more. Plus you’ll save all those miles that the often tasteless food your grocery store stocks has been forced to travel.

4. Turn off unused appliances at the socket. Standby mode still uses lots of energy. Cut your fuel bills by turning off televisions and other items when they’re not in use. That includes your computer’s monitor as well. Screensavers only stop the screen from getting burned in images. Energy saving mode cuts power usage but nowhere near as much as the on/off switch does.

5. Wash your clothes at a lower temperature. Modern detergents work fine at lower temperatures. Or throw away the detergent in favor of Eco washing balls, saving on the fossil fuels that are used for most modern detergents as well as cutting your washing costs without compromising wash quality.

6. Turn down your thermostat in the winter (and turn it up in the summer if you use air-conditioning). One or two degrees difference is barely noticeable, except when the fuel bill arrives. When you get used to the new, lower temperature, turn it down another degree or two!

7. Compost waste if you have a garden, saving on fertilizer cost and giving your plants a treatment they’ll love.

One of the best things about the Internet is that it brings the entire world closer together. When your job is environmental causes and spreading awareness about green living, you know just how important the Web can be to disseminate information. This is why no green or environmental awareness campaign should be without a website.

Getting Information Out

People need all the information necessary to make an informed decision. Because the media and advertising offers only one side of the story – the sensationalist version and the version that sells – it’s up to you to give the public the rest of the story. It’s not easy to combat information campaigns backed by big money. But with a Web site, you have maximum exposure for minimal cost. An article written on a pamphlet will only be read by a few. That same article posted on your Web site will be read by thousands. Those who want the information will be able to find it.

They say that pictures communicate a thousand words and in the green world that is true a thousand times over. Sometimes people need to see the devastation and damage alongside the statistics in order to understand what’s happening, who it’s affecting, and where.

Bringing Information In

Staying on top of developments out in the world, depending on how wide the scope of your campaign, is a crucial component of providing information. You need to have the most up-to-date information in order to remain on the cutting edge of developments in the movement.

With a Web site, there are a variety of ways to allow people to contact you and report updates and news in their area. A blog is the most popular forum, with different sections dedicated to different aspects of the cause or perhaps different states, cities, counties, or regions. Allowing visitors to your site to post what is happening around them is a great way to allow communities to be an active part of their local campaign. In fact, the Web is home to the newest incarnation of journalism: on-the-street eye witnesses reporting the news at a grassroots level in real time. Perfect for the green campaign!

Organizing the Masses

Another way that your Web site can contribute to the growth of your campaign is to assist you in organizing your greatest resource: people. Volunteers can sign up to man booths at fairs and concerts in their area or to head letter writing campaigns or to get local businesses involved.

You can have a form online for them to fill out with their information so that you can organize regional lists and find out their strengths, schedules, and specific interest in the campaign so that you can better utilize their skills.

Presenting Your Case

Finally, once you’ve organized the information in such a way as to educate those who are already interested in the subject can get informed, your focus should then turn to those you have to convince – the legislators.

With links to incredibly detailed maps on Google Earth, researched and recent statistics, personal testimonies of voters, petitions, graphics, and more, your Web site will not only increase the visibility of your campaign but inform the people who can help change the laws.

Some of the environmental issues that arise from paper production and disposal include the pollution of air and water, high energy use, large landfill requirements and deforestation. To keep the impact on the environment to a minimum we need to change the ways in which we view paper products and begin to reuse and recycle these produces more in an environmentally safe manner. Some of these ways include the use of reusable grocery bags, buying products made from recycled paper, and using cloth towels and napkins instead of paper versions.

In order to have a smaller environmental impact with paper products, we need to begin by reducing our use of them (obviously!) and reusing products whenever possible. Instead of reaching for the roll of paper towels to clean up a spill, why not use a dish towel? Or, instead of using a fresh piece of paper to write your grocery list, start using the back of a receipt or the back of and envelope that a piece of mail comes in. These all seem like minor things, but the impact of doing them all, or the impact that could be effected if we all did one of them, can be pretty profound.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, paper made up the largest share of municipal solid waste in 2006 at 34%. While about half of paper waste is recovered for recycling or compost, the other half ends up in landfills, where it does not readily decompose. Recycling alone is also not a cure-all; the recycling process as well as production from virgin pulp uses water, energy and chemicals. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), paper mills use 40% less energy to produce paper from recycled material than from fresh lumber, but may use more fossil fuels for recycled paper than for that made from virgin fiber. According to the EIA, recycling also uses fewer chemicals than ordinary paper production, and naturally does not pose the same threat to forests. While recycling paper that we can no longer reuse and purchasing recycled paper products can lighten our ecological footprint, reducing and reusing should not be forgotten. Investing in durable reusable bags can help us remember to avoid paper bags when shopping.

Have you thought about the chemicals that are used in paper products that have been bleached and their impact on the environment? Bleached paper items are done with Chlorine, which can cause dioxin, a highly toxic chemical that can cause cancer and birth defects in humans. Paper mills release these chemicals along with other pollutants, such as sulphur oxides and carbon monoxide into our waterways through effluent polluting, contaminating our water and the organisms that live in these waterways, possibly poisoning humans. Paper mills are the largest industrial polluters in North America. By using reusable grocery bags over paper or plastic bags, we will be helping to minimize the impact on the environment that is created through the paper production process.

Finally, we can’t forget about the fact that making fresh paper requires the harvesting of millions of acres of forest (trees) every year. Deforestation causes a number of problems. It destroys animal habitats, putting species at risk for extinction. It reduces the amount of carbon dioxide that can be turned in to oxygen which increases the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. This in turn can contribute to global warming. Finally, actually cutting down the tress, shipping them to mills, and so on consumes a large amount of fossil fuels and generates an unnecessary amount of pollution. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, over one third of the wood harvested in the United States is solely for the production of paper products. Again, we can lessen these impacts by recycling paper products, using recycled products, and beginning to use less paper products in general.