This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's a good reminder: Bring your own reusable bags to the store with you. Over 12 million barrels of oil are used to make plastic shopping bags ever year. Given the small percentage of plastic bags that actually get recycled, the majority end up clogging landfills or littering oceans, forests and rivers. And don't just use reusable bags for groceries: Major retailers and other stores now allow and encourage reusable bag use.

When laundering items like fleece sweatshirts, pants, light coats and other machine-washable items that have a zipper on them, be sure to zip them up before putting them in the wash. When the zippers are down, the teeth that make up an zipper act like little chainsaws. They can tear and rip into clothes when washing and drying laundry. And if you really want to protect your clothes, turn them inside out so they don't fade or wear out as quickly.

If you use an inkjet printer, you know that it can be expensive to replace cartridges when the ink runs low. Since black is the most popular color used when printing, it's often the first to start to fade or streak when you're printing documents. If this is the case, change the color of the text on your document from black to dark blue. This will extend the life of your cartridges; you'll get dozens more pages with this simple hack.