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Get greener for summer by trying as many of these 17 challenges as you can.

Warning: Acting on these tips may be incredibly fun and result in a cleaner conscience.

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Green Mountain Energy

By now, even your grandma knows that solar panels can save you money and a bike ride to work is a greener option than a Hummer.

If you really want to help save the planet, then you’re probably hungry for new and creative tips you can actually do to make a real difference.

While many of us may not be ready to turn your home into a zero-waste household that only does laundry once a year, most of us are looking for some pretty awesome life-hacks to do good, all while reducing clutter, saving money, and pushing our families to get a bit more creative.

Sustainability feels more important now than it's ever been, so we're getting you these tips with no time to waste.

Image via iStock.

We spoke with Jeff Becerra of Stop Waste, an Oakland-based public agency that makes sustainability easier for residents and businesses and came up with 17 ways you can totally nail going green:

The first five are food-based because that's one of the largest contributors to waste in the U.S. — over 60 million tons of produce per year — and the rest ... well, you’ll see.

1. Organize your refrigerator to ensure perishables get eaten first.

And feel free to use freeze-dried foods for trail snacks, flavor powders, and more. They have a longer shelf-life. If you’ve got the funds to drop a few thousand dollars on a freeze-dryer yourself, go nuts. In the meantime, this option is becoming mainstream enough to be able to pick up at your local grocery store.

2. Freeze overripe fruits and vegetables, leftover meats, and discarded bones for simple, tasty, and nutritious snacks and staples.

Think smoothies, bone and veggie stocks, and frozen veggies as healthy additions to hot meals.

3. Buy fresh ingredients in smaller quantities more often.

Image via iStock.

This way, you waste less and enjoy fresher ingredients.

“A lot of people are shocked when they learn how much food ends up in landfills every year,” says Becerra. “It’s not just the landfills and how those can affect your soil and water. It’s also the methane that organic material releases into the air as it decomposes.”

4. Shop your fridge and cupboards first to avoid buying food you already have on hand.

Also, avoid marketing gimmicks that encourage you to buy more than you need. If you get 10 items for $10 and only eat five before they spoil, that’s $5 wasted.

Image via iStock.

5. Make A Smarter List

Plan ahead for meals, not just individual items you think you’ll need. For example, will you or your family members eat out this week? How many times? What do you need to make the remaining meals, and how much of it? Be realistic. If you’re up for taking the plunge, buy food package-free.

Image via iStock.

6. Take a stand with your takeout.

Some online services like Grubhub, Seamless, or restaurant websites will give you the option to skip the plastic utensils and paper plates, or they leave room for comments or special notes where you can make that request. Also, take note of any eateries that use sustainable packaging.

Green Mountain Energy also offers unique tips on their blog that are pretty innovative.

7. Win with weatherization.

On average, homes that are 10 years or older will have duct leakage of 27% or more. That means you’re likely paying to cool your attic. Sealing your ducts and insulating your home can cut your energy bills by up to 35%.

8. Get your floors green.

We don't mean paint them (although, feel free, it's your domicile). Next time you’re considering getting new floors, look for products that use plant-based adhesives and are free of urea-formaldehyde (visible on the ingredient list, takes some practice to say). Sustainable options include cork, bamboo, engineered wood, or other natural materials.

9. Round up binders, scissors, highlighters, crayons and pencils that work, but aren’t needed anymore.

Then, check in with area schools to see if the supplies could be used in the classrooms.

10. Know that your old pen could become art.

The Pen Guy collects ball point pens, dry erase markers, felt tip pens, mechanical pencils and more. Then, the writing instruments are repurposed into recycled pen art.

11. Minimize idling.

It's equally important to stay green outside of the house, too: when parked, turn off your car if you will be waiting more than 10 seconds, so you aren’t wasting fuel.

Image via iStock

12. Drive nicely.

Aggressive driving, such as speeding up and braking sharply, can burn more gas.

13. Beautify your home with rare, one-of-a-kind, repurposed, and “upcycled” decor.

Keep yourself (or your kids) occupied, teach your students an array of subjects with hands-on activities, or make it a date night: use found, salvaged, and recyclable materials, make something new and beautiful. Creative reuse doesn’t just help the environment, it engages our minds and can even help us connect and collaborate with others.

14. Don’t ditch that dress: donate it.

If you ever wonder, “Who could possibly use this?” the answer is almost always someone. Your old stuff is more valuable than you think. Clothing donations create free or low-cost options for families in need. Even our most tattered belongings can enjoy the glory of a second life as building and manufacturing materials, and more.

15. Set goals and make stepping up your recycling and composting a game.

Image via iStock.

Conscious Carnival has appeared throughout the United States at major music festivals and tours, universities and schools, local fairs and farmers markets, and professional sports events. Take a page out of Conscious Carnival’s book and turn sustainability into a challenge in your homes and workplaces. How quickly do you fill your trash can? Now consider some easy ways to fill it more slowly, and see immediate results.

16. Take a page from “Zero Waste Girl” Lauren Singer, who has filled a small cup with the amount of waste she produced in a year.

And it’s OK to just take one page.Instead of overhauling your entire life and spending it refilling mason jars and making your own soap, maybe start with her small hacks, like declining straws in your drinks and choosing email over paper receipts.

Image via iStock.

17. Track down your local drug-take-back program.  

From expired or irrelevant prescriptions to old bottles of the over-the-counter stuff, drugs in landfills can mean trouble for the environment. More cities and towns are instating this program at least once a year, so do some Googling!

Pretty painless, right? Taking on any of the above won’t just feel good, but may even be fun and keep your wallet fatter.

If you like a challenge, we dare you to check one of these items off the list for the next two weeks — but if you end up making one small lifestyle change or trying just one of these on for size this month, you’re still awesome in our eyes. Don’t forget to pass it on: After all, a digital footprint is carbon-free.

Green Mountain Energy is just one company that's been walking the eco-friendly walk for over 20 years...get familiar with them if you want to take a stroll down greener-living lane.

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Drill holes in some wood and put it outside. Good job — you just helped save the bees.

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Disneynature's Born In China

You know what's great? Animals.

This is not new information, I know. But in case you need a reminder...

Exhibit A: A baby seal making an entrance.

Exhibit B: This slow loris needs you to just give him a minute, please.

Exhibit C: A hedgehog enjoying bath or stuck upside down but either way is adorable.

Exhibit D: LOOK AT THIS PANDA'S TONGUE.

And Exhibit E: in which this baby bat is me, all the time, always.

See? You'd forgotten how great animals were, hadn't you?

There are some animals who need our help, though.

As the environment comes under increasing threat of harm, so do the animals that live in it.The good news is, there's a lot we can do right in our hometowns.

Here are 25 easy things you can do to get started on your path to becoming a wildlife warrior.

1. Create or restore your backyard wildlife habitat.

Find out what species live in your area, then add places for them to eat, drink, and sleep in your backyard.

2. And once you've done that, set up another one wherever you work!

3. Build a bee house.

Bees don't need much to make a home — just a cozy hole in some wood. Drill holes in your spare lumber and scatter them around your yard to give them someplace to live.

Image via iStock.

4. Start composting your waste.

It helps keep the soil rich, which in turn makes sure animals' natural plant food is happy and healthy! (Plus it cuts down on garbage waste.)

If soil had a mouth, it would be watering. Photo via elbrozzie/Flickr.

5. Learn how (and why) to shop for local, sustainable produce.

Non-locally sourced food uses up a lot of resources traveling to the grocery store. It's a lot better for the environment (and the animals that live in it) to shop locally, buying only what's in season.

6. If you live near a bat population, build an easy bat house to give them a place to rest.

Bringing a bat colony to your backyard will also cut down on the amount of mosquitoes hanging around. Bonus! Image via iStock.

7. Take this World Wildlife Fund pledge.

By doing so, you'll be committing to raise your voice in support of various environmental efforts around the world — and the WWF will help you find out where your efforts are most needed.

8. And apply to become a panda ambassador!

If you're feeling ambitious, apply to work in partnership with the WWF in your community.

9. Make a butterfly feeder, then put it near a window so you can admire its visitors!

10. Avoid buying products with microplastics, like face scrubs with plastic beads.

Tiny plastics might seem harmless, but they pollute the environment with chemicals and are dangerous to animals that swallow them.

11. Join the Endangered Species Coalition's activist network.

12. If you have large glass windows or doors, buy decals to prevent birds from colliding with them.

13. Learn how to care for your lawn and garden without using herbicides or pesticides.

It's actually not that hard. Undiluted white vinegar is an alternative to weed killer, and you can spread corn gluten in the spring to solve problems like dandelions and crabgrass.

14. Disinfect your birdbath to prevent the spread of disease.

15. Plant native, bee-friendly flowers in your yard.

Flowers like lavender, white clover, and goldenrod — just to name a few — provide our fragile bee population with homes to pollinate and populate. (Just make sure you're not introducing plant species that aren't native to your area.)

16. Buying souvenirs? Make sure they're not made from threatened or endangered species, like ivory or coral.

Image via iStock.

17. Participate in Clean Ocean Action's annual Beach Sweeps (or go out and do your own sweep whenever you're in the mood).

Clean Ocean Action's annual event not only serves to clean up beaches, it also provides scientists with data on pollution patterns that help them design solutions for the future.

18. Always cut up your six-pack soda rings before recycling them, and never let balloons loose outside.

Releasing balloons can seem like a cool idea, but it's devastating to nature. Balloons and bags that end up in the ocean create a hazard to turtles and other sea animals that mistake them for tasty jellyfish.

Image via iStock.

19. Avoid buying single-use items, like coffee pods, plastic water bottles, and disposable utensils.

Even if they're recyclable, it's still better for the Earth to get the permanent version and wash it between uses. The plastics in single-use items put harmful chemicals into animal environments, and it takes valuable resources (like pollutive fossil fuels) to melt them down and recycle them.

20. Build a frog pond in your backyard.

Image via iStock.

21. Sponsor an animal at your local zoo or through the World Wildlife Fund.

22. Find out what bills are currently being proposed to protect America's wild animals, then call your congressional representatives and ask them to support them.

23. Conserve water and electricity in your house by taking shorter showers, turning off electronics, and buying energy-efficient appliances.

Keeping our carbon footprint small helps slow climate change, which causes harm to animals that need a cold climate to live.

24. Only buy MSC-certified fish.

Certain populations are susceptible to overfishing, so make sure you're eating the right ones. There are over 20,000 certified sustainable seafoods to choose from with the Marine Stewardship Council, so it shouldn't be too hard.

Image via iStock.

25. Above all, stay informed.

The best way to help any animal species is to do research, get the facts, and find out more about how to get involved with organizations that are working to help.

There are plenty of things you can do at home to help save wildlife. From fun projects to small tweaks in your routine, simply being more mindful of the environment we inhabit can help us understand better what the animals around us need.

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Gorongosa Coffee
Heroes

Students have designed an amazing new afterlife for our leftover coffee grounds.

If coffee makes your mornings way better, just look at what your leftover coffee grounds can do.

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Gates Foundation: The Story of Food

For many of us, coffee is essentially magic.

You buy it, you brew it, you drink it — it never lets you down. You get that nice little caffeine buzz going, and you're instantly launched into "I can do anything!" mode.

But have you ever thought about where your leftover coffee grounds go when you're done with them?

Some people compost; others choose the trash. Or, you know, some people find ways to save lives with their grounds.

Students from the University of Toronto are using coffee grounds to create an alternative to firewood for women and children in refugee camps.

Those coffee grounds you had from last week = a burnable log that helps kids? Yes. It's called Moto.

The Moto log! Image via Moto, used with permission.

Moto's aim is to eliminate women and children from having to leave their campsites to search for firewood in what can be dangerous situations. In refugee camps, women and children are known to walk many miles very early in the morning to find enough flammable materials to cook breakfast. This puts them at high exposure of the risk of rape and sexual attack from local militia and men living near their camps, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

With Moto, they won't have to travel at all.

"As soon as they're out of the camp, they're unsafe and that leaves them open to assault," Sam Bennett, one of the founders of Moto, told CBC Toronto. "[Moto] prevents the dangers associated with that, but also frees women up to spend time doing other things, whether that's trying to find another source of revenue or spending time educating their kids."

Looking for firewood. Image via Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images.

So, how exactly do coffee grounds become fuel?

A team of MBA and engineering students from the University of Toronto came up with a simple recipe: They made a burnable log by mixing dried-out coffee grounds, paraffin wax, and sugar and baking it in a loaf pan. That's it!

According to CBC Toronto, the team is currently getting coffee grounds from three participating coffee chains in the local area. But they'll be looking for a major partnership when they scale up in size.

Right now, the logs can burn for nearly 90 minutes and can be used for cooking, heating — pretty much anything firewood can do. The team hopes to increase the length of burn time in future versions of the product.  

Moto founders: Matthew Frehlich, Sam Bennett, Lucy Yang, Gowtham Ramachandran, and Lucas Siow.

The simplicity of the logs shows promise for its future, and they did that on purpose so the logs eventually can be produced locally.

In addition to helping keep women and children safer, Moto helps protect the local firewood supply (aka trees!).

There's rampant deforestation in and around refugee camps that we rarely hear about. The UNHCR points to how wood consumption in camps is greatly exceeding what nature is capable of replenishing — and that puts everyone in danger.

With Moto, they won't have to rely only on wood.

Image via iStock.

These burnable logs have the potential to decrease waste, help reduce hunger, protect forests, and keep women and kids safer.

They can create less food waste by reusing coffee grounds and help the environment by eliminating the need to cut down trees. The logs reduce hunger because they can be used as fuel for cooking and provide warmth and light in unstable areas. And they open up more opportunities for women and children, empowering them and keeping them safer.

It's truly a full-circle approach at making the world better — and one that we can all play a role in.

Though they're not at the level of commercial production yet, the Moto team will compete for the Hult Prize in March 2017, a global competition with a first-place prize of $1 million to continue their social venture and ensure Moto's presence in sub-Saharan African refugee camps. Good luck to them; they're onto something big.

How cool is it to think that the coffee you're already drinking every day could be used to help someone cook dinner for their family on the other side of the world?

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A genius way to repurpose old, unwanted furs for a great cause.

'There are all these people who have inherited fur but don’t want fur and don’t know what to do with the fur.'

Fur in fashion gets a bad rap for a good reason.

While fur is a rightfully taboo fashion choice for many people, recent reports show it's unfortunately making a comeback on runways again.

So what can we do to curtail this cruel trend, aside from not buying furs and encouraging others to do the same?

What about all those old, unwanted furs people have inherited from previous generations? What should become of those?

What if we could use old furs to save baby animals?

Born Free USA, an animal advocacy nonprofit, is doing just that.

Wild bunnies. Photo by Kim Rutledge, Wildlife Rescue Center, Missouri, via Born Free USA.

Born Free has partnered up with over 16 wildlife rehabilitation centers nationwide to send them furs that have been donated by people from all over the world.

The furs are used to help rehabilitate baby animals who've been orphaned or injured.

Opossum sibling. Photo by Fund for the Animals via Born Free USA.

"There’s nothing that any of us can do to undo the cruelty that created those furs in the past," said Adam Roberts, CEO of Born Free USA. "But what we can do is try and have animals benefit from what is already out there. Give the furs a useful home."

River otter kits. Photo by Blue Ridge Wildlife Center via Born Free USA.

Roberts got the idea during an ivory crush he attended in Colorado. Ivory crushes are held to destroy a large amount of ivory in order to effectively remove it from market circulation and broadcast the message that ivory shouldn't be worn or used by anyone other than elephants.

"I started to think about other scenarios in which there are wildlife products we want to remove from the marketplace as a signal that there should be no commercial trade in those animals or their parts," Roberts said.

He did some research and found wildlife rehabilitation centers often collect blankets for wayward animals. He thought old furs might be similarly useful, and just like that, the Fur for the Animals was born.

Fur donations at Blue Ridge Wildlife Center. Photo by Chris Yurek via Born Free USA.

Born Free began calling for fur donations in 2014. Today, they've collected over 800 furs — worth an estimated $1.5 million.

They collect over a four-month period from September through December, which also happens to be the time when baby animals need the most help warming up.

While the animals themselves can't say what a difference the fur means to them, the photos below speak pretty loudly.

Just look at how much Reggie the Bobcat loves his fur blanket:

GIF via Born Free USA/YouTube.

And this baby skunk so cozy in his fox fur:

Photo by Fund for Animals via Born Free USA.

Or this bear cub doing yoga on his new fur mat:

Photo by Fund for Animals via Born Free USA.

And this injured baby squirrel nestling in fur while having a snack:

Photo by Nicholas Alexiy Moran, Urban Utopia Wildlife Rehabilitation in New York via Born Free USA.

Whether it's because it reminds them of their mothers or simply that it acts as a warm, safe haven, the wildlife centers report that the furs really do seem to aid these animals in their recovery.

One fur coat can go a long way, too. Case in point, these 28 coyote cubs who found comfort in one fox coat.

Not all 28 coyote cubs pictured because they can't all fit on the fur at the same time, but you get the idea. Photo by Fund for Animals via Born Free USA.

What's most encouraging to Roberts and the rest of Born Free USA are the letters they've received from donors who finally feel like their fur coats will serve some purpose.

As Roberts said, "There are all these people who have inherited fur but don’t want fur and don’t know what to do with the fur."

Think about it. You have this fur from a past relative that has never felt right to keep, but it never felt right to throw it away either, so it's been sitting in your closet for years, just taking up space. Born Free USA is your chance to get rid of the fur in a way that both honors its former owner, the animal that gave its life, and brings the fur back to the wild.

Like this person who donated their mother's fur coat:

Image via Born Free USA.

And this person who donated their grandmother's fur coat:

Image via Born Free USA.

Roberts himself donated his grandmother's old furs.

She was of the generation that had come through the Depression, he explained, and bought things like steaks and fur coats as a way of proving they had made it out.

"She was a big advocate for me. But she was also someone of a different generation," said Roberts. "I think she would've been very proud to know some good use came out of the furs she had, because even though she had them, she also appreciated the cause of animal protection and conservation."

Bobcat kitten on a bed of fur. Photo by Fund for Animals via Born Free USA.

Roberts hopes Fur for the Animals will not only give old furs a second life comforting injured animals, but that it will raise awareness of the abhorrent nature of the fur industry and help put a stop to it once and for all.

He is well aware of the cruelty of which the fur trade is capable. Showing what a positive effect old furs can have on animals may be the most effective way to get the world's attention. Once people have been engaged by the sweet photos, he hopes the "stop the fur industry" message will fall on more attentive ears.

Thousands of animals died to make these furs, and that's a sad reality we can't go back and rectify. We can't undo what's been done, but we can change what we do with the millions of unwanted furs that still exist — and we can make sure we're moving forward positively. Even if this doesn't bring the fur industry to a screeching halt, bringing these furs back to wildlife is perhaps the only fitting way to end their story — with a new beginning.

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