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My 10 Favorite Ways to Save the World in Under Five Minutes

From the guys* who brought you the CoolPeopleCare.org site that makes sustainability easy, comes their first book “New Day Revolution, How to Save the World in 24 Hours.” It’s a fun, quick read. What I like most about it are the 100+ easy tips to living a greener, more stress free life.  Do one thing a day and you can make a big difference over time.

My Top 10 Favorite Tips:

1. Wake up earlier: Since I wake up at 4:59 a.m. practically every day, this one resonates with me. I get more meaningful things done between 5:23 and 7:19 a.m. than practically any other time during the day. They point out that getting up a few minutes earlier every day buys you as many as 50 extra hours per year. Just think of what you can do with 50 extra hours.
2. What’s that lever for? Personal pet peeve: Use your friggin’ blinker and relieve some stress in those drivers around you. Your blinker is the only human element on your car. It’s kind, considerate, and courteous, and it says, “Excuse me, pardon me, I’d love to get over, thank you very much.”
3. Trick your plate: The next time you renew your license plate, sign-up for a plate that supports a cause. You’ll be a rolling brand evangelist and your cause will raise some money.
4. Digital donations: We spend one-third of our lives at the office, so naturally it’s an environment where we can make a big impact. Start by donating those old computers, printers, cells phones and other electronics to schools and charities.
5. Personalize the mug: More than 44 billion paper cups are used each year for hot drinks. So pal around with your own coffee or tea mug and use and reuse it.
6. Just click it: *Sam and Stephen prove in their book that that you don’t have to do much to end up doing a lot. For example, they point to the Animal Rescue Site that enables you to provide a half a bowl of food to a needy pet with a simple click of your mouse.
7. Get fresh: Frozen food requires 10-times more energy to produce than fresh food. Chew on that for a bit.
8. Take the bag back: 500 billion plastic grocery bags are consumed worldwide annually. So either use canvas (some prefer hemp) shopping bags, or re-use your existing paper and plastic.
9. Change the bulb: If every American household changed their five most-used light fixtures to energy-saving incandescent bulbs, it’d be like taking 8,000,000 cars off the road saving $6,000,000,000 in energy costs. That’s a lot of 0′s!
10. An email a day helps keep global warming away: Ok, so I wrote that one. You can’t blame Sam and Stephen.  Fact is, though, I subscribe to their daily email on the handful of simple things that I can do, and the cool events happening on and offline around the country to help me save the planet five minutes at a time. I highly recommend it.

What tips can you add to the list to help save the planet in under five minutes? And don’t forget to get your own copy of New Day Revolution.