What's Your Green IQ?

Solar power and wind power depend primarily on the weather—sunny days, strong breezes—and microhydro power requires running water with a downward-sloping grade. Ground-source heat pumps, though, use the relatively constant temperature of the Earth to provide power—and require about half as much energy as traditional systems.

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How to Go Green: Alternative Energy
Generating Off-Grid Power: The Four Best Ways
Alternative Energy Mansions

It might not sound like much, but the 1/4 of our pharmaceuticals that come from the rainforest is a perfect illustration of just how connected the worldwide environment and economy are: what you pick up (or skip over) at the local drugstore could have ramifications across the globe.

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Why to Go Green
Rainforests: Lungs and Heart of the Planet?
Save the Rainforest One Click at a Time

Planning your menu around foods that grow in your area means you'll cut down on the greenhouse gas and packaging used for importing—plus, you'll be supporting your local economy and neighbors. But while local foods have health benefits of their own, they don't have to be organic.

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Earthtalk: Why Eat Locally?
Eat Locally and Ease Climate Change
Eating Local Food: The Movement, Locavores, and More

Next time you go to apply makeup, lotion, or creams, think about this: as your largest organ, your skin absorbs 60 percent of what you use. For a woman that wears makeup every day, this means more than 4 pounds of makeup a year go through your skin and not just on it.

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How to Go Green: Women's Personal Care
Know Your Cosmetics Ingredients: Top Five Ingredients to Avoid
Make Your Own Eco-Friendly Cosmetics

Both upcycling and downcycling are forms of recycling—turning something that would otherwise be waste into something usable—but while downcycling means the resulting material is lesser quality than the original, upcycled products don't need to be changed from their original format. This means there's less energy expended while turning trash into new treasures.

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Green Glossary: Downcycling
Green Glossary: Upcycling
16 Ways to Turn Trash into Treasure

You may barely notice that dripping faucet in the bathroom sink, but your water bill—and the world's water supply—are taking the hit: even a small leak can result in the loss of 20 gallons of water a day. Leaky toilets are even worse: they can waste as much as 90,000 gallons every month.

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How to Go Green: Water
How to Conserve Water
Set Your Green Home Priorities for Water Conservation

Biodiversity hotspots can be located anywhere in the world, but they must meet certain criteria: be home to at least 1,500 species of plants that aren?t found anywhere else in the world, and have lost 70 percent or more of the original habitat. The 25 currently labeled sites contain "nearly 60 percent of the world?s plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species."

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Biodiversity Hotspots
Why to Go Green: Getting Techie
Welcome Back: Two Species Thought Extinct

With approximately 50 percent of the world's tropical forests already gone, deforestation is taking its toll on the native plants, animals, and insects that call those places home: it's estimated that 137 species a day are going extinct.

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Why to Go Green: By the Numbers
Four Worst Places to be an Endangered Species
Expansion of One Mammal Species Leading to Extinction of 1000 Others: IUCN Releases 2008 Red List of Threatened Animal Species

Recycling is such an easy, everyday way to go green that sometimes we forget that its benefits really do add up. As the Why to Go Green Guide says, "you can make 20 cans out of recycled material with the same amount of energy it takes to make one can out of new material. The energy savings in one year alone are enough to light a city the size of Pittsburgh for six years."

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Resuse, Recycle Your Aluminum Foil
What Really Goes on in a Recycling Plant?
Recycle 21 Things You Never Knew You Could

If you're not already composting and recycling in your home, it's time to get started: both processes are easy and effective, even in small spaces. And don't just recycle in the kitchen: get shampoo bottles and soap boxes from the bathroom, and paper and old electronics from the office. Look into counter-top composting if you don't have a garden, and start making an impact.

Read more:
Why to Go Green
How to Go Green: Recycling
Compost: How to Make it, Bins, Piles, and More