20 ways to go green

Students at Exploris Middle School in Raleigh, came up with the following for the Lexus Energy Challenge.

1. Front and back: Yes, there are two sides on paper! When printing, use both sides.

2. Turn the lights off! In daylight, or when lights are not in use, turn them off, save energy.

3. Reuse water bottles: Buy a reusable water bottle instead of a plastic bottle, which takes many years to decompose. "You could save an average of $200 per year as well as 14 pounds of plastic," says www.bankrate.com.

4. Find your carbon footprint: at www.ecofootprint.org. Tote a reusable bag. For $2 or less you can buy a tote bag. This is much better than a plastic bag, which rarely is reused.

6. Go organic! Many highly processed foods are made in factories and have many pesticides and chemicals

7. Unplug it! Cell phones chargers, computers and power tools are rarely used 24/7. When not in use, unplug them to save energy and money.

8. Do the dish: Paper towels are not only expensive, they are not eco-friendly. They kill trees, raising CO2 emissions. Opt for a dish towel instead.

9. Change to CFL lighting: They use much less energy but create the same amount of light. If everybody changes to CFL lights we could save a lot of money and energy.

10. Use bar soap. It is much less expensive, and by using bars you'll be eliminating all the packaging that goes along with liquid soaps and body washes.

11. Leave your shoes at the door. This minimizes distribution of dust-bound pollutants.

12. Set your computers to sleep more quickly because it saves more energy.

13. Switch to cold water. Ninety percent of the energy used to wash clothing is used to heat the water. Save money and energy by switching to cold water.

14. Start composting. Composting is an easy way to reduce the amount ofgarbage produced in your household. Composting is also a good way to get more nutrients in the soil in your yard.

15. Stop junk mail. Every year on average 100 million trees are turned into junk mail. A total of 4 million tons of garbage comes from all of the junk mail.

16. Download music in place of buying all of the CDs. Packaging will be saved and 40 tons of CDs won't end up in the landfills.

17. Don't buy canned fruits and vegetables. Canning the food uses about 10 times as much energy to keep the fruit fresh.

18. You can save one tree by recycling a 3-foot-high stack of your old Sunday newspapers.

19. According to the Web site www.co.stlouis.mo.us/, every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill a giant skyscraper. All of the jars are recyclable. Recycling one glass container saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.

20. Buy a hybrid. Driving a hybrid prevents gasoline from spreading into the atmosphere and creating greenhouse gases, causing the temperature to rise.