Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs use 75 percent less energy and last 10 times longer than traditional bulbs.
They save money on electric bills, but are they good for your health?
Those corkscrew-looking CFL bulbs are part of the big push to go green. They are supposed to reduce people's carbon foot prints and save money!
But they could also be causing headaches.
"We flipped on a light switch in one of the rooms, and within 10 minutes I developed a migraine. And I could tell it was from that light," said Dr. Larry Newman, Headache Institute, Roosevelt Hospital.
Neurologist Larry Newman says patients have called him with similar complaints and that includes people who normally don't get migraines.
"I know as a migraine sufferer, those lights trigger my headaches. Normal fluorescent lights don't, but those lights have actually given me headaches," he said.
But not everyone is convinced.
"I'm still waiting for my first patient to come in and tell me, that's the cause of their migraines, these new energy-saving bulbs," said Dr. Mark Green, Columbia University Medical Center.
CFL's use newer technology eliminating flickering associated with older fluorescent bulbs, but because the bulbs are new, research is limited, so this could be just the tip of the iceberg – or not.
"If in fact it's just a handful of people who are sensitive to it, then it's not really a big issue. But if you think there's 30 million Americans who have migraine and if an overwhelming proportion of people start to develop headaches, it's going to really be a big health issue," said Dr. Newman.
Before replacing all of the lights in your home with the new CFL bulbs, Dr. Newman suggests trying them out in one room first to make sure you don't have a problem.
Incandescent bulbs are set to be phased out by 2010.
