1. Use mugs or glasses not disposable cups at the workplace. If you think this seems trivial, then the following instance will make you think again! In the UK, 5 billion disposable plastic cups are thrown away each year. 5 BILLION! If that’s the case with a small country like the UK, then where do we stand?

2. Cut down paper use instead of trees.Obviously it’s impossible to avoid paper completely. But it IS possible to cut down the amount of paper we use, reusing it and trying to buy recycled paper. Does recycling make such a big difference? Absolutely! Recycling really does make a difference, and it’s not just about saving trees. Energy consumption and pollution savings can be huge: every ton of recycled paper saves 32,000 litres of water and enough electricity to power an average house for six months. In addition, recycling creates three times more jobs than incineration.

3. Give your flower beds some coffee.Did you know that coffee-grounds are perfect compost material? Next time you’re about to tip out the coffee pot, tip it onto the flower beds, pot-plants or onto your compost heap, instead of into the bin! Other good things to compost are old pruning, straw and hay, eggshells and dry leaves. Avoid cooked food and meat.

4. Do not drop litter. It can kill. Don’t believe us? Here’s a stat for you. Last year the RSPCA in the UK rescued 7063 animals due to litter-related injuries – a massive increase of 23.5% on the previous year. The casualties included a young goose with a fishing hook in its eye, a hedgehog trapped inside a plastic drinks bottle and a sheep with a child’s plastic chair stuck over its head. Ouch! Also huge numbers of sea-animals and birds die because of plastic and other rubbish in the oceans.

5. Always SNUB - Say No to Unwanted Bags.Consolidate all your shopping in one bag rather than getting a new one at each shop. For the truly committed, take your own shopping bag with you. A shocking statistic for you: UK shoppers use 8 billion plastic carrier bags a year!

6. Use short bursts of water from the tap when you are shaving and when brushing your teeth. Just using it in spurts to rinse your toothbrush can save 80% of the water that you normally use. Switch off dripping taps, or get them mended. The earth’s reserves of water are running low, so it is important to conserve as much water as possible. You may think that your drip might only waste, probably, a litre of water a day, but think about a similar situation in millions of homes across the globe. A dripping tap can waste more than 24,000 litres of water a year – that’s more than an average household uses in a month!

7. Make a point to use your feet or a bicycle for short distances. The major contributor of air pollution is vehicular pollution, especially in cites. So use your feet or a bicycle for short distances. It’s good for your health and the health of the ozone layer!

8. Turn appliances off instead of switching to standby. A DVD player on standby uses almost as much current as one playing a CD. When the standby light is on, so is the appliance, so it’s still using energy! If everyone switched their TV right off at night we could save enough energy to power a town the size of Pallamalli. According to the 2004 report by the US Department of Energy on national residential electricity consumption, the total consumption of electricity was 1.29 billion megawatt hours (MWh), of which 5% is used as standby. This is equal to a power consumption of 64m MWh, which is roughly the output of 18 power stations!

9. Buy products with less packaging. Can you think of anything more wasteful than double-packaging? Buy products with less packaging or use products that can be refilled.

10. Save energy with your cooking. There are several ways in which heat, and therefore energy, is wasted when you use a saucepan to cook. Use the right size pan, and only use the water you need to cover the food you are boiling. If you use a pressure cooker, turn off the gas before the dish is finished. It will continue cooking in the steam for several more minutes. Make sure the pan base just covers the ring of an electric cooker, and if you are using a gas hob adjust the flame to suit the size of the pan – if the flames come round the side, you are heating the kitchen too! And when you wash your pans, save water by leaving them to soak rather than washing them in running water.