The celebration of earth day April 22 works to bring awareness to environmental issues in the world today. It seems as if efforts to go green are all around, and it can often times be a challenge to select causes to contribute to. However, reducing consumption and promoting environmental awareness is surprisingly simple.

One small way to go green is to print on both sides of a piece of paper.  When printing on campus, students can select the small check box in the printing options that allows the printer to utilize both sides of the paper.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency statistics, there are more than 71 million tons of paper and paperboard used in the United States each year. Although printing on both sides of the page can seem insignificant, it essentially reduces your paper printing consumption by half.

Another way to be earth-friendly on campus is to have reusable water bottles or coffee cups. The EPA has also researched that a staggering 90 percent of plastic water bottles are never recycled, and when they are, the plastic takes years to decompose. One can’t help but benefit from this small change too, since filling up a reusable water bottle during the day instead of buying water will save money.

Reusable coffee cups have great benefits as well.  Not only does it cut down your paper product waste, a hot drink can stay heated longer.  Some coffee shops even offer discounts to those who bring in their own cup to fill.

A final money and planet saving tip is as simple as flipping a switch.  When leaving a room for more than 15 minutes, turn off the lights.  Not only does this save the energy time of the lights bulb, it also reduces cooling costs in the summer by reducing heat in the house emitted by the light.