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EASY WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR TONNES

"Walking school buses" are supervised walks to school.

Kids - walk to school!
Ferrying children to school contributes to morning rush hour traffic and our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Exhaust fumes in school zones also create an unhealthy atmosphere for children. Commit to having your child walk to school and count 1/5 tonne savings. If 5 children, who would normally be driven, walk to school instead - that would save 1 tonne in a year - and earn their school two trees!

Rinse in cold water and wash in warm
Clothes rinsed in cold water come out as clean as those rinsed in warm water. Washing in warm rather than hot water uses 50% less energy, and your clothes will come out just as well rinsed and, depending on the fabric, less wrinkled. This will reduce your GHG emissions by 1/5 tonne per year.

Low-flow showerhead with shut-off lever
Installing it takes only minutes, but it delivers big savings in water consumption and water heating, because it allows you to interrupt water flow. A low-flow showerhead uses 60% less water than standard fixtures and will save you one-fifth of a tonne in GHG emissions annually.

Vacuum your refrigerator!
After your furnace and hot water heater, your fridge is the biggest energy user in your home. The coils at the back of your fridge get rid of heat that accumulates, but this heat also attracts kitchen dust and grime that makes the whole system work less efficiently - and use more energy. Make sure to first disconnect the fridge and safely pull it from the wall. Use a vacuum cleaner to remove the dust.

Get involved: tonnes@environmenthamilton.org

ARBOLIST? “Arbolist. look up the word. I don’t know; Maybe I made it up. Anyway, it’s an arbo-tree-ist, somebody who knows about trees.” - George W. Bush, quoted in USA Today, Aug. 21, 2001