Contribute to a saner environment by examining your own lifestyle for waste. Start a family recycling program. Take the time to separate newspapers, glass, plastic, and metal items from your trash and send them to a local recycling center. Bring your own boxes or bags to the grocery store, buy in bulk, and buy foods and beverages in containers that can be recycled. Save and reuse mailing envelopes, boxes, packaging of all kinds, wrapping paper, aluminum foil, and so on. Contribute clothing, old furniture, and household items to charitable organizations that distribute them or prepare them for resale.

There are many other practical, everyday choices you can make that will contribute to your own health and support the earth at the same time. You can:

• Plant trees. One million new urban trees would reduce CO2 emissions in the United States by eighteen million tons and energy consumption by forty billion kilowatt hours (worth ~$4 billion) annually.
• Eat lower on the food chain. The reliance on meat and meat products in the world’s industrialized countries is upsetting the entire world economy, necessitating the destruction of rain forests and farmlands to support the grazing of beef cattle.
• Consider reducing your energy “footprint.” Do this at home and in your workplace. Pay attention to how much energy you waste—lights left on, hot water running down the drain, excessive automobile use, and poor insulation with temperatures set too high in winter, too low in summer. Solar technology is growing in sophistication every year. You can install solar panels on your roof and reduce your draw from the power grid, sometimes even feeding power back into the grid during peak demand times and getting paid for it. Until we start thinking in terms of reducing our consumption and using alternative sources of energy, we will continue to live out of balance with the earth’s self-regulating systems.
• Reflect on the interdependence of all things. Realize that everything you think or say or do has an effect—either for good or ill—on your state of health and ultimately on the health of Gaia. Share what you know.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. —Edmund Burke

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