“Earth Day” is celebrated each year on April 22, and this year marks the 45th anniversary of this holiday. On Earth Day, we take time and effort to help clean the world and make it a better place by paying special attention to trash, water use, and pollution. However, as modern technology is increasing exponentially, people are putting less attention to the world around us, making just one day out of 365 not enough. We need to be more conscious of the mark that we leave on the planet. Every little thing helps, and in the end, it will pay off. Here’s a list of things that you can do to help save the Earth-not just on one day, but every day.

1. Conserve water: Fix leaky toilets, stop runny faucets, and turn off the tap when you’re brushing your teeth. One leaky toilet can waste 200 gallons of water a day; if your toilet ever has a leak, make sure to fix it as soon as you catch it.
2. Don’t always utilize cars for transportation: Walk or ride your bike to close destinations, or take public transit such as the bus or metro. If you stay off the road two days a week, you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 1,590 pounds a year.
3. Recycle: Cans, bottles, cardboard, paper, glass, plastic, and metal are just a few of the things that we can recycle instead of throwing away. Other things can be composted, which is simple and also doubles up as a good fertilizer. Out of 63 million newspapers printed each day in the U.S, 44 million, or about 69% are thrown away. Recycling just the Sunday papers can save more than half a million trees every week. A huge amount of paper is used every year, so we should do everything we can to decrease this.
4. Change your light bulbs: Compact fluorescent light bulbs last 10 times longer than a standard light bulb and use at least two-thirds less energy. If you change all of your light bulbs, the energy saved is equal to 25 million people not using their vehicles.
5. Make your home more energy efficient: Clean your air filters so your system doesn’t have to work overtime, and get a programmable thermostat so you aren’t wasting energy when you not home. If you adjust your thermostat one degree higher in the summer and one degree cooler in the winter, each degree will save about 10% energy. Also, turn off lights when you’re not in the room and unplug appliances when you’re not using them. You should also turn your computers off at night completely instead of leaving it in sleep mode; by doing this you can save 40 watt-hours per day.
6. Maintain your car and drive smarter: Underinflated tires decrease miles per gallon by up to three percent. Underinflation also increases tire wear, so it will save you money in the long run if you’re consistent about checking your tire pressure. Also, slow down! Driving 60 miles per hour instead of 70 on the highway can save you up to 4 miles per gallon. Accelerating and braking harder can actually reduce miles per gallon. When using cruise control, your vehicle could get up to 15% better mileage.
7. Keep an eye on amounts of water you use everyday: Take a shorter shower and go to car washes. Every two minutes you save on your shower can conserve more than ten gallons of water; if everyone in the country saved just one gallon from their daily shower, over the course of the year it would equal twice the amount of freshwater withdrawn from the Great Lakes every day. If everyone in the U.S. who washes their car themselves took just one visit to the car wash we could save nearly 8.7 billion gallons of water.
8. Use only as much as you need: Use both sides of paper and less paper napkins. American businesses throw away 21 million tons of paper every year. That’s equivalent to 175 pounds per office worker! During an average year, an American uses approximately 2,200 napkins—around six each day. If everyone in the U.S. used one less napkin a day, more than a billion pounds of napkins could be saved from landfills each year.
9. Be careful with electronics and recycle old cell phones: The average cell phone lasts around 18 months, which means 130 million phones will be retired each year. If they go into landfills, the phones and their batteries introduce toxic substances into our environment.
10. Pay bills online: If all households in the U.S. paid their bills online and received electronic statements instead of paper, we’d save 18.5 million trees every year, 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and 1.7 billion pounds of solid waste.

All in all, there are many ways to help the earth. None of them are hard to do, as they are all simple daily things. You can make a difference!