We all know how to live green, right? Wrong!

Most of us understand the basics, like turning off light switches and recycling our waste, but there are still many environmentally-unfriendly things we do or use every day, without thinking. Here are just a few of them - and some of them may surprise you!

As you read these ideas, you may be forgiven for thinking that some of my suggestions are just too small to matter - but that's precisely why they're worth doing. Because they're so small, it should be fairly painless to make the changes - and the payoff could be surprisingly large. 

The statistics I've given come from Australia. Even though our population is quite small, the savings still add up to a lot - if Americans or Europeans adopted these ideas, just think what we could achieve.

1. Put down that stapler! If every office worker in Australia used one less staple a day, it would save about 3 tonnes of steel every year. Just think what we could save if the whole world did it!
2. Don't buy cleansers and soaps with "exfoliating beads". The beads are plastic and are small enough to wash straight through the sewerage system and into the mouths of sea creatures.
   
3. Get yourself a charger and buy rechargeable batteries instead of disposables BUT...
   
4. Don't charge your batteries - or your cellphone - overnight. Most mobile phones only need about two hours to fully charge. It's been estimated that in the UK, about $50 million is wasted every year, just by leaving chargers on all night. That's a lot of wasted energy!
5. Recycle your old glasses the best way possible - by giving them away for re-use. About 200 million people in the world need spectacles and can't afford them. In Australia, you can hand your old specs into any OPSM optometrist, or to your local Lions club.
6. Recycle your old wine corks. Any branch of the Body Shop accepts them in Australia, and gives them to the Girl Guides who recycle them to raise funds.
7. Park your car instead of going through the drive-thru. Ever thought how much petrol you use idling in the queue? I find I get served faster, too, so it doesn't cost me any extra time.
8. Be ruthless - delete old emails and files on your work computer. Because memory is so cheap, many companies don't put limits on your file space any more - instead, they just buy more memory as the company's files grow. That may not cost much in money terms, but every silicon chip is more plastic and more toxic chemicals.
9. Log out and switch off your computer every night. If your company policy prevents that, at least switch off your monitor. The cost of running a PC overnight isn't much - but computers generate a lot of heat. That heat builds up in an enclosed office building, so the air conditioning has to run extra hard next morning to bring the temperature back down - and that can cost thousands.
10. This one isn't new but it's so important it's worth including - don't buy bottled water. It's one of the worst pollutants in the Western world, both in the cost of production and the plastic waste produced. If you can't live without a bottle of water in your hand, buy a portable filter type - but the latest research indicates you only need about 2 litres of fluid a day, from all sources, unless you are exercising heavily.
    

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Jewellery photo by Urbanwoodswalker on Flickr.