Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil's government unveiled new eco-friendly development plans for the Amazon rain forest Thursday, including low-cost loans to farmers and emergency measures to combat illegal logging.
The Sustainable Amazon Plan will grant farmers 1 billion real (US$600 million, €388 million) loans at 4 percent annual interest, well below the country's benchmark 11.75 percent rate, to adopt eco-friendly farming methods and encourage reforestation, Environment Minister Marina Silva said.
The lush Amazon rain forest covers 4.2 million square kilometers (1.6 million square miles), an area larger than Western Europe — with 70 percent of its territory in Brazil. About 20 percent of the original forest has been razed by ranchers, loggers and developers, scientists said.
"The Amazon belongs to humanity and produces benefits for the entire planet, but it's Brazil that cares for the Amazon, Brazil that decides what to do with the Amazon," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Thursday.
A recent surge in illegal deforestation threatens to reverse three years of improvement, leading the government to boost efforts to crack down on illegal logging.
Now, in a bid to reconcile economic development with conservation, the government is also offering 40,000 families once involved in logging food, social security and unemployment benefits, as it develops other programs to help them find new sources of income.
"We are reaffirming the concept that the Amazon is not only a mass of trees, but also of the more than 24 million Brazilians who live there," said National Integration Minister Geddel Vieira Lima, who coordinates rural development.
The plan also aims to improve Amazon highways and river transport, expand ports and broaden access to electricity, Environment Minister Silva said.
