If you’re like many people in a growing percentage of Americans who are becoming more aware of the consequences that their actions have on the environment and are wanting to do something besides switching your plastic carryout bags for paper bags and paper sacks, then you will be glad to know that there are many other things you can do to initiate change and to make mankind’s interaction with the environment more friendly. This article gives many tips on how you can change your actions and change the way you live so that you will not harm the environment as much as you have been already.

We all know that cars are one of the worst things for the environment, so many people are wondering what they can do to reduce the bad effects that their car has on the environment, and of course one of the easiest things you can do is to avoid driving whenever possible, which you can do by taking a different means of transportation like the subway or a bike, and also try to keep your trips closer to home. You can be more efficient with the gas you use to fuel your car and decrease emissions by driving 55 miles per hour instead of 70 miles per hour, and making sure that your tires are inflated and that you drive slowly and do not accelerate too quickly can make a difference when you’re concerned about the environment or even just your own gas consumption.

A big environmental concern is the great distances that our foods travel over before they reach us in our super markets and grocery stores, as this process creates extra pollution that is unnecessary and can really be easily avoided in many cases. If you make an effort to buy your food from local sources like from farmers markets, or a community garden, you will be helping the environment by reducing the pollution generated by shipping masses of produce all over the country, but you will also be preserving the great nutrients and the delicious flavors of the food you are buying because those are lost many times in the long transit from their origin to where you live.

Packaging is another huge source of pollution in the United States and accounts for as much as a third of the garbage we throw away every year, so if we stop buying things that have a lot or excessive packaging, stop buying single servings of items and try to buy things in bulk we can reduce a lot of the waste that is produced by packaging. Fast food and any take out that we might purchase means that there is just that much more pollution that we are creating, and if we buy fresh foods and cook everything at home then we will be saving a lot of pollution. Another thing you can do to reduce packaging to reduce the amounts of things you buy a lot of when they are available in concentrated forms like cleaning supplies for kitchens, dishes, clothes, as well as other things.

Source by Chuck R Stewart