Green solutions

Installing insulation and sealing leaks can save as much as 16%.

Air dry your clothes -- The U.S. uses 66 billion kWh per year to dry clothes.
Air drying rather than machine drying laundry three months every year would save 25% of this energy.

Set your water heater to 120�F -- About 40% of U.S. households use electricity for water heating. Households with electric water heaters use 2,552 kWh/year for water heating.

Recycle steel ("tin") cans -- The average U.S. household uses 90 lbs of steel cans each year. Recycling this saves 144 kWh.

Recycle aluminum cans -- Recycling one aluminum can saves 0.35 kWh. Americans use 200 million aluminum cans per day.

Recycle glass bottles -- Recycling one glass bottle saves 0.4 kWh. The average U.S. household uses about 383 containers per year.

Drive less aggressively -- EPA's latest regulation on fuel economy labeling suggests that highway and city driving is a 57/43 split; assuming that potential fuel economy improvement is half of the maximum improvement. BSB estimates that potential fuel economy improvement is 12 percent. The emissions savings are based on a vehicle with a fuel economy of 20 mpg being driven 12,000 miles a year.

Drive the speed limit -- Reducing speed from 70 mph to 65 mph results in a 9% improvement in fuel efficiency.

Keep your car tires inflated -- Under-inflated tires can lower gas mileage by 0.4 percent for every 1 psi drop in pressure of all four tires.

Carpool or take public transit to work -- The average commute in the U.S. is 30 miles.
Assuming the reduction occurs for 50 weeks, annual driving would drop from 11,900 to 10,400.

To buy a hybrid or car that is more fuel efficient saves you money every month.

Fly less -- A domestic flight originating in the U.S. averages about 42 passenger-miles per gallon and international flights average 21 passenger-miles per gallon, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Burning a gallon of jet fuel produces 21.1 lbs of CO2 (U.S. Department of Energy and the Energy Information Administration, Instructions for Form EIA 1605B, Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Appendix B). In addition, according to the Climate Neutral Network, non- CO2 greenhouse gas emissions from air travel are at least as significant as the CO2 impacts (doubling the emissions as expressed in CO2-equivalents) and upstream processes add an additional 8 percent. Aviation was responsible for appr. 1.8 tons CO2-equivalents per person in 2007.