Ordering bank statements on email instead of regular postage

If you regularly throw away your bank statement after reading them, then you can help reduce paper consumption by seeking email bank statements instead of postage. Simply talk to your bank and ask if they can send statements to your email address instead of postage on paper.

This will help reduce paper consumption by a great deal, especially if you live in a country that does not recycle paper then you'll also help reduce paper waste.

Buying coffee in tin cans instead of packages

For those of you who make coffee to drink at home and drink and live in a country that recycles waste, this is a good suggestion for you. In many supermarkets, coffee beans are for sale in packaging as well as tin cans. Plastic packaging of coffee is pictured below and is non-recyclable:

In countries that recycle certain waste- which does not include plastic, buying coffee in cans helps reduce waste. Pictured below is tinned coffee which is recycable:

If you are a strong environmentalist or wish to contribute towards the environment by producing less waste and more recycling then you are encouraged to buy canned coffee instead of packaged ones.

Adopting a pet from an animal shelter instead of a pet shop

I understand that not all cities or countries have animal shelter programs, but for those countries that do, people should adopt pets from there instead of buying them at a pet store.

Animal shelters are voluntary programs and rely on donations from various sources in order to support abandoned/uncared animals. Pet shops on the other hand keep animals from controlled breeding and profit from selling animals. Pet shops do not rescue abandoned animals either. They just sell animals born into their care.

Animal shelter organizations on the other hand are voluntary and usually don't charge for giving pets for adoption since animal care is their obvious goal. Some shelter organization may charge to be able to get funds for supporting their work, but other than that they are non for profit.

By adopting a pet from an animal's shelter, you can make a difference by reducing their workload. The longer an animal stays in a shelter, the more the shelter will have to pay for food and care, including medical care. The more animals adopted from a shelter, the less the workload there is on an organization and more resources saved.

By adopting from a shelter, you will be helping support such organizations instead of buying from corporate pet shops. So whenever readers are considering adopting a pet, remember to turn to an animal shelter instead of a pet store. This way you'll be supporting animal care a great deal.

Reducing ketchup pot waste when eating at a fast food place

For those who eat at fast food places like Mcdonald's or Burger King will notice many of their branches provide ketchup sauce from tiny paper pots such as the one pictured below:

The ketchup is drained from a machine into the paper pot by pushing a lever. Usually when buying anything larger than a small fries, weather McDonald's or any other, you would need more than one paper pot to dip the fries in and finish them.

I usually avoid fast food and occasionally go to McDonald's/Burger King and when I do I use the same paper pot to finish the fries. I just refill it with ketchup when it runs out instead of getting another paper pot and filling it. This reduces paper waste.

I know it won't make much of a difference if one person does it, but if everyone who ate at fastfood places did this, it would make a difference.

Buying rechargeable batteries and reducing package waste

Even in countries where recyclable material is collected and regular batteries can be thrown as recyclable waste, each time a set of batteries are purchased and used there is paper waste produced by disposing the packets these regular batteries come in.

Take for example these batteries pictured in their packaging below:

While those batteries pictured above are recyclable, the package they can be seen in are not and so each time you buy regular batteries such as those you produce package waste.
But by buying rechargeable batteries pictured below, you produce waste only once after you buy it. By recharging these batteries each time they run out of power, you don't need to buy new ones and throw their packets each time. This reduces a significant amount of packaged waste.

The most ecological rechargeable batteries are Ni-MH rechargeable units (Nickel-metal hydride), which are the current state-of-the-art in rechargeable battery technology.
Also you will save money by recharging the batteries instead of spending money each time to buy new ones.

How to save water when washing your hands

Whenever you do work that involved getting your hands dirty, make sure that you have done all your work before washing your hands.
If you need to wash your hands before doing similar work again, don't wash your hands at all.

Make sure all your work is done before washing your hands. If you wash your hands after each chore, you are wasting water so to help conserve as much water as possible, make sure all the work is complete and only then wash your hands.

If you need to wash your hands in between chores because it's necessary for a specific chore such as child care, cooking food with your hands etc. then do so. But even then try to finish all the dirty chores before moving on to the cleaner chores.

All this helps conserve water.

How to save matches when lighting more than one fires on a gas stove

People who use gas stoves to cook their food and boil other things can save matches for lighting it.
When you need to light more than one stove for cooking food, boiling milk and/or water, light one stove with a match as pictured above. If you're lighting another stove next then turn the gas on and use the same burning match to light the other stove(s).

If you need to wait for a while, take an already burned match as pictured below, stick and let it catch fire from the stove already burning and use it to light the next stove(s).

This method will save you thousands of matches and reduce waste.