Earth Day approaching: how can you help Mother Earth?

Earth Day is not too far away, falling on Sunday, April 22nd this year. With the holiday approaching, it's time to start thinking about ways to "go green". And Indiana needs some help with becoming more eco-friendly. A report issued a couple of months ago has listed Indiana as the 9th least greenest state out of all 50 states for 2018, and Michigan did far better, coming in at 20th place. Indiana's biggest problem areas look to be air quality, energy consumption, and recyclable municipal solid waste. The worst of these by far is air quality: Indiana comes in at 46th place out of 50 for cleanest air.

But, there are some things that you can do to help our planet and help bump those eco-friendly numbers up in both your homes and places of work! If you work in an office setting, the best thing you can is get a recycling bin to place next to printers, copiers, etc. to cut down on paper waste. And, make sure to empty those recycling centers to cut down on overflow. Also, if you and your other coworkers drink coffee throughout the day, make sure to use "real" coffee mugs instead of plastic or styrofoam cups to reduce waste. Invest in a coffee machine that doesn't need paper coffee filters as well.

At home, there's several other things you can do to stay green.

• Shorter shower time will help save more water than you would expect, even cutting down your time in the shower by a few minutes will save hundreds of gallons of water over a year. 
• Installing CFLs will cut down on energy costs.
• Switching to water filters eliminates the need for buying water bottles at the grocery store and it cuts down on plastic waste too
• Lastly, and this is something you might not realize, recycling your cell phone will help your old phones stay out of landfills. You can easily send those back to the manufacturer to be recycled.