More Green Habits, Courtesy of Scientific American

Scientific American had an article today about 11 environmentally friendly habits. Most of them are stuff we've covered before - toilet paper made from recycled materials, growing your own food, putting away the electronic appliances, switching from hot water to warm and cold for your washing machine. But here are a few more to consider.

- According to Bill Nye the Science Guy, you can save energy by putting a lid on the pot whenever you boil water. If every U.S. household did this just once, we'd save up to $2,212,175.

- For beginning gardeners, I like the Burpee "Money Garden" seed pack.  It costs $10 and can produce $650 worth of  carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, beans, peas and peppers.

- Did you know that a 2008 study by researchers at the University of Illinois found that children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder who took walks outdoors raised their attentiveness scores and that kids who walked in natural settings did better than those who walked city streets? Says Scientific American, if you get kids outside and away from the video games, we can save 16 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, about four times the output of Hoover Dam.

- The PayItGreen Alliance says that switching to electronic billing would save 6.6 pounds of paper, 63 gallons of wastewater discharge, 4.5 gallons of gasoline and 171 pounds of greenhouse gases per household per year. They also say that if just 2 percent of American households switched from paper to electronic billing, more than 180,000 trees would be saved and greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by the equivalent to taking 32,572 cars off the road. You can calculate your own savings here.