If have room in your backyard, consider making a wildlife brush pile habitat. It's exactly that: A pile of sticks, branches, twigs and other natural materials built up into a pile. It provides habitat during the cooler months for all sorts of wild animals. It's also a place for insects to call home; these insects become valuable food for wild animals. Even just covering your flower garden with raked leaves provides a warm habitat for smaller animals, all while insulating flowerbeds to be ready for next year.

With colder temperatures around the corner, many of us will look for firewood to keep our homes warm during the winter months. One way to make your firewood choice more sustainable and better for your home is to source firewood that's local. If you purchase firewood that was logged more than 50 miles away, you risk bringing in invasive insects that can damage your home and the trees around your house. Often, firewood bundles sold at supermarkets or chain stores are from trees cut hundreds of miles away. Buying locally also cuts down on the carbon footprint.

Cardboard is pretty easy to recycle, and it is accepted in most curbside recycling programs. In fact, it's valuable and desirable, generating about $100 per ton for recyclers, so you can rest assured your flattened cardboard boxes are definitely staying out of the landfill. When recycling cardboard boxes, be sure to flatten them; it makes transporting them in recycling trucks much more efficient. Also, there's no need to remove labels and tape -- it gets separated out at the recycling plant. But the most important tip: Don't recycle cardboard boxes on rainy days. Wet cardboard is ruined and tossed in the trash.