First, take a carbon footprint checkup of your own life to see where — and how ­heavily — you stand on the earth. Online, head to MyFoot­print.org or SafeClimate.net/­calculator to play the numbers game.

Swap out your incandescent lightbulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs. “They use about 66 percent less energy, and they last 10 times longer,” says Anca Novacovici, president of Eco-Coach. Worry not — bulb technology is finally catching up to your design aesthetic. The latest compact fluorescent bulbs don’t throw off that odd blue light, and they even look like their incandescent counterparts, so your lamp shades will continue to sit snugly.
Recycle — seriously. Yes, it’s almost painful to say it to you, because of course you already separate out the paper and the plastic, right? But just in case you don’t, soda cans make it clear why you should: Aluminum has a 99 percent recycling rate. “You can recycle it forever,” says Novacovici. And recycling just one little aluminum can saves the same amount of energy it would take to run a TV for three full hours. One can!

Put the kibosh on junk mail and catalogs (as much as possible). Direct marketers send out about 60 catalogs for every man, woman, and child in the United States annually, according to Novacovici. And all that junk mail? There’s 100 million trees’ worth sent out per year, which is “equal to deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months,” says Wise. Stop in at the Direct Marketing Association’s Consumer Assistance site (www.dma ­consumers.org/cgi/offmailing) to opt out of mailings from the association’s members, and visit the Center for a New American Dream’s “Declare Your Independence from Junk Mail” page (www.newdream.org/junkmail/index.php).

Paper or plastic? Go fabric instead and you could keep up to 1,500 plastic bags per year from making their way into landfills, says Wise, adding, “It takes 1,000 years for plastic bags to biodegrade.”

Layer on clothes instead of giving your thermostat an extra twist. Take your thermostat down a mere two degrees this winter (and up two in the summer) and you’ll save 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide each year. And if the environmental benefit isn’t enough to get that thermostat moving, just think how much money you’ll save. “Being green doesn’t take more green,” says Wise. “You can actually save a lot of money.”

Give power cords a tug. There’s still a little something surging through all those electric cords around your house after you turn off your appliances. “Between 10 and 40 percent of energy used is actually used when the appliance is turned off but still plugged in,” says Novacovici.
 
Take public transportation when you travel, or if you must drive, rent a hybrid vehicle. How much does a hybrid really save? A Toyota Prius emits four tons of greenhouse gases and uses 7.4 barrels of petroleum per year, while a Toyota Camry emits 7.7 tons of greenhouse gases and uses 14.3 barrels of petroleum annually.

Lend your voice to the earth by encouraging your local representatives “to support a national mandatory cap on ­global-warming pollution,” says Ben Dunham, staff attorney for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “The biggest step … an individual can take is to [ask] their member of Congress to support a science-based solution to global warming.” Two bills currently under consideration in Congress are the Safe Climate Act in the House of Representatives and, in the Senate, the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act.