To live green, we talk and hear about doing things differently: Buy a specific kind of car or dishwashing detergent, recycle your bottles and cans, take the bus instead of driving…the list goes on and on. But we can also live green by not doing things.

Reducing your carbon footprint means making decisions that are right for the environment, including the use of fewer natural resources. By choosing to not do something, like take an extra trip to the store when it could be combined with another trip, or printing a file when you could read it from your computer, saves production energy and the resources to make the effort possible. And, even though recycling is a great way to reduce the amount of materials in landfills and save on the use of additional natural resources, not having to replace the original product is all the better.

How often could we either make do with what we have, repair versus replace, or just do without altogether? Let’s add a fourth “R” to the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” trio: ”Reconsider” - as in reconsider taking an action that would require resources. It’s a tough concept in the world we live in, but choices have to be made to make green personal.