Help the environment in just 10 minutes a day

4. Living green in the paper-full age
A memo generated on untold reams of paper in the 1970s heralded the Age of the Paperless Society. Only the contemporaneous American changeover to the metric system matched the folly of the "paperless office" concept. According to the American Forest and Paper Association, paper consumption has increased about 13 per cent since 1970.

Let's face it, until alternatives are adopted, paper is here to stay. Of course, our use of paper has a great impact on the health of our forests and on our planet. One way to reduce that impact is to conserve printing paper at home and at the office by trying the following:

• Keep two piles of paper near your printer. One is fresh paper for important, final printing. Another consists of paper already printed on one side. Use the blank side for printing drafts and unofficial documents.

• You can also use the blank side of the printed paper for notes and scratch paper.

• Try your own hand at the paperless office. Get in the habit of saving information on disk rather than printing everything.

• Recycle all paper when it has lived a full and useful life.

Another way you can conserve paper is by buying recycled paper products. The next time you're browsing for a new read, be sure to seek out titles printed on recycled paper.

5. Spidey to the rescue!
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know there's something wrong with the air, but it did take one to discover a solution -- Dr. Bill Wolverton of NASA, to be exact. And now you can execute that solution in your own home...and make a new, green friend.

Your home may be your castle, but it can also be your poison gas chamber. In newer structures, walls, furniture and sealants are out-gassing nasty stuff like benzene, trichloroethylene, and formaldehyde. These gases cause rashes, allergies and even cancer.

Hit the nursery or drugstore and buy yourself a shade-loving houseplant. The effort you expend will be nothing compared with that of your new flora companion, who will filter out many gases (not tobacco smoke or dust, alas) in just a few hours. A single spider plant can absorb 85 per cent of a room's formaldehyde in just six hours! And plants help keep your house cool, reducing the need for air conditioning.

Here's a short list of plants to consider:

• Dwarf banana plants
• Golden pathos (Scindapsus aureus)
• Chinese evergreens
• Peace lilies
• Peperomia
• Mother-in-law's tongue (Sansevieria)
• Nephthytis (Sungonium podophyllum)
• Popular indoor ferns (Nephrolepsis)
• Pygmy date palm (Phoenix roebelenii)
• Bamboo palm (Chamaedorea)
• Spider plants (Chlorophytum elatum)

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Excerpted from The Ten Minute Activist: Easy Ways to Take Back the Planet by the Mission Collective. Copyright 2007 by the Mission Collective. Excerpted by arrangement with Thunder's Mouth Press, an Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc., distributed by Publishers Group Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.