Here’s a list of Quick tips to help you save money around the home….

Reusable Grocery Bags

Often made of recycled materials themselves, reusable grocery bags are available at the checkout counter of every store or thrift shop. Just remember to bring them with you!
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Pay Bills Online Or Direct Draft

If you’re not taking advantage of this, you’re wasting a lot of time, money, and resources that you don’t have to. This isn’t new anymore so there’s no reason to be afraid of it. It’s been tested and legitimised-all good, no monsters.

Disposable Plastic Water Bottles

These are as non-green as you can get. Besides filling our landfills with a mass of materials that never break down, disposable plastic water bottles also contain chemicals that leech from this thin type of plastic into the water. Get a good quality reusable water bottle and an inexpensive filter for your sink. You’ll save a ton of money, help the environment, and reduce one more risk to your health.
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Water Rationing

Nobody likes this one and most communities have to have forced water restrictions to maintain water levels that will sustain the basic needs of communities. With Metering on the horizon water awareness is prudent.

Using Renewable Energy

Wind, sun, and bio-diesel are just a few of the most visible types of renewable green energy being used today. Eventually, there will be no choice. While these may not be highly visible in my area, they are visible all around us. Check our services.
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Lighting

CFL (compact fluorescent lamps) lighting took a while to catch on but is quickly replacing most common light bulbs in homes as well as shelf space in the stores. In the near future we should see LED (Light Emitting Diode) lighting become even more widely used than CFL as they are even more energy efficient.
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Working At Home

While there are a lot of reasons for this one, working, freelancing, and contracting from home is becoming much more common. Regardless of reason or intent, it does save energy from travel, lessens the need for more building, and for heating, lighting, and cooling large office buildings.

Email

Email instead of post-not only do you save energy and reduce Carbon (delivery emmisions) but you also save paper.

Carpool

This one has been around since the “US energy crisis”. And even though you don’t hear much of it anymore, it’s still widely practiced by smart folk in the states…..a mater of time (or cents) before it happens over here?

Buying in bulk

Buying in bulk means:

• Cost Savings: When many items are packaged together, the manufacturer doesn’t have to spend as much to process and package them, and the savings is almost always passed on to the consumer. Bring a calculator with you to the grocery store and compare bulk item per unit costs to single item costs. You might be surprised how big the difference can be.
• Waste Savings: Less packaging means reduced waste.
• Time and Space Savings: Less trips to the store means less transportation costs and pollution, and more free time.If you ever thought buying in bulk was just for large families and businesses, you were wrong. It can help your family to live a green lifestyle and save money, waste, time, and space.

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Cut Back on Meat

This may seem like one step too far for many of you but we’ve insisted on offering non prejudiced, non biased advice to all our readers so far, and so we intend o continue… our demand for animal and meat products has made an impact on the environment, not to mention our overall health and fitness. Consider that in the USA, 70% of homegrown cereals and grains are fed to farmed animals. This industry consumes one-third of all domestic nonrenewable resources, including fuel. There’s also the subsequent moo cow methane.

Even Quicker Tips…..

• Start a compost in your back yard or on your rooftop. /
• Buy locally made products and locally produced services. /
• Buy in season  
• Buy compact fluorescent light bulbs. You’ll find more on energy-efficient products and practices /
• Turn off lights and electronics when you leave the room. Unplug your cell phone charger from the wall when not using it. Turn off energy strips and surge protectors when not in use (especially overnight).
• Recycle your newspapers
• Car pool
• Ride a bike, walk, jog, or run
• Buy EBooks instead of Real Books /
• Get off junk mail lists.
• Buy products that use recyclable materials whenever possible.
• If you use plastic grocery bags, recycle them for dog waste bags or for small trashcan liners.
• Bring your own bags to the grocery store.
• Consider buying a fuel-efficient car or a hybrid. /
• Landscape with native plants.
• Go paperless. Consider reading your newspaper and magazine subscriptions online. Switch to electronic banking and credit card payment, too. /
• Teach kids about the environment.
• Take your batteries to a recycling centre
• Do full loads of laundry and set the rinse cycle to “cold.”
• Limit the length of your showers. Even better, take a “navy shower,” shutting off the water while soaping up and shampooing.
• Don’t run the water when brushing your teeth.
• Wash towels after several uses
• Don’t use disposable stirrers. Just pour in your sugar and milk first and then add coffee. Each year, Americans throw away 138 billion straws and stirrers, enough to make a giant straw statue—twenty times taller than the statue of Liberty.
• Avoid using rubber bands if you can. About 3/4s of rubber bands are synthetic, made from crude oil.  When these are incinerated at the dump, significant health effects can result.