Here's a simple way to clean up a dirty secret in the shower: Choose bar soap over body wash. Liquid body washes are packaged in plastic bottles that, even if they are recycled, are still made from petroleum sources. Also, the No. 1 ingredient in body wash is water, which adds significant weight to the package, requiring more fuel to ship it from the factory to the store shelves. Even if the body wash is an all-natural or organic brand, bar soap has it beat as the greenest choice.

Many people know that if you use plastic shopping bags at the grocery store, it's easy to bring them back to the supermarket and deposit them in recycling bins. But did you know you can also recycle other types of plastic bags and film in those same bins? The large plastic wraps on new mattresses and furniture can be recycled, as can dry cleaning bags and the plastic wrap on items like toilet paper rolls and napkins. And here's the best part: Even bubble wrap can be placed in those recycling bins. Just pop the bubbles so it doesn't fill up the bin prematurely.

Have a musky leather coat that you would like to freshen and make smell like new? Since you can’t toss it into the washing machine, and expert dry cleaning can be very expensive, give this natural trick a try instead: Use the sun. On a bright, sunny day, turn the coat inside out and lay it on a large towel in a sunny spot for several hours. The natural ultraviolet rays from the sun will eradicate odor-causing bacteria, and inverting it will protect the leather from fading. You can also place the coat in an airtight storage box with a bowl of baking soda in the box. The baking soda will absorb odors naturally over the course of a week.