When You’re at Home

Use a water-filter pitcher
Bottled water isn’t necessarily cleaner or better for you than tap water. Get a Brita water-filter pitcher ($22, www.bedbathandbeyond.com) or an in-sink faucet filter. Take advantage of what you already pay for and save the environmental cost of transporting bottled water to the grocer’s shelf.

Skip red meat once a week
Meat production — especially in mass-produced beef — is extremely resource-intensive. It can take seven or more pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, and livestock consumes 70 percent of America’s grain. Eat less of it and choose pasture-fed, sustainably raised beef whenever you can. If you alone gave it up once every seven days, you would save the 840 gallons of fresh water it takes to produce a single serving.

Clean up your dishwasher
Switch to a dishwashing powder that’s biodegradable and plant-based (try Ecover Ecological or Trader Joe’s powders). These cleansers cut through grime, but they do it without the bleach and phosphates that threaten river and marine life and leave chemical residue on your dishes.

Curtail junk mail
The Federal Trade Commission website, www.ftc.gov, spells out how to remove yourself from lists. (Click on “For Consumers,” then “Telemarketing,” then “Unsolicited Mail, Telemarketing and E-mail: Where to Go to ‘Just Say No.’”) You’ll save trees, water, and emissions, too. If everyone in the United States reduced the junk mail he receives every week, 100 million trees would be spared each year.

Install a better showerhead
If you have a wrench, you can preserve the diminishing fresh-water supply and reduce expensive water-heating costs. Install faucet aerators and high-efficiency showerheads and in a year’s time you’ll save between 1,000 and 8,000 gallons of water. Bonus: The added air makes the pressure feel greater, too.