Environmental Leader

In an effort to get households and businesses to reduce their environmental impact, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Garrison Institute have instituted an education campaign called Simple Steps.

Based on the report, “Simple and Inexpensive Actions Could Reduce Global Warming Emissions by One Billion Tons” (PDF), the education campaign is a blueprint for reducing U.S. emissions by 15 percent, or about a billion tons.

The biggest opportunity for reducing emissions is in addressing household energy (45 percent), followed by transportation (22 percent), diet and food waste (17 percent) and recycling and responsible consumption (16 percent).

As one example, if every American who travels by plane three times a year or more were to fly once less per year, about 55 million metric tons of emissions could be averted.

Consuming paper and plastics more responsibly – by using double-sided printing, reducing catalog subscriptions and buying less bottled water – cold help shave another 60 million metric tons of emissions.

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