When it comes to making a weekly trip to the grocery store, the easiest way to green your supermarket visit is to stay at home. If your community has online supermarket shopping from companies like PeaPod or Fresh Direct, for example, you can use them to deliver your food, cutting your carbon emissions from not driving by as much as 50 percent. Because the delivery vans are designed to do cluster deliveries to multiple homes on a single route, it is the greenest way to shop for your weekly veggies, eggs, bread and milk.

It may seem like no big deal, but don't flush common household toiletry items like cotton balls, cotton swabs and even dental floss. Even though it may seem harmless, the reality is these small things can create massive problems. Dental floss can wrap itself around other objects in the sewage system and cause clogs (think of it like fishing line). And cotton items can swell up and get lodged in the bends of pipes, creating blockages that can cause clogs -- and major pluming repair bills.

Laptop computers are convenient because they have an integrated rechargeable battery that lets you work anywhere without having to be near an outlet. But if your day-to-day computer is a laptop, is it better to keep it plugged in the whole time or disconnected until you need to recharge the battery? According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, keep it plugged in whenever you can -- AC power is 20 percent more energy-efficient than using the battery. If you have a laptop with an easy-to-remove rechargeable battery, you should remove the battery and plug in the laptop if you plan to work from one location for extended periods of time for the maximum in energy savings.