BOOK NAME: True Green Kids: 100 things you can do to save the planet
AUTHOR: Kim McKay and Jenny Bonnin

I read True Green Kids, which is a book about things you can do to save the planet. I tried some of the things in there with my family. One was to try to take shorter showers. The book said to time your showers so they aren’t longer than four minutes. The book says most people take seven-minute showers, but if they lasted only four they could save more than 6,600 gallons of water a year! I set a goal of just two minutes. My dad timed me. It was hard. Time would run out right when I’d start rinsing the soap and shampoo so now I try to clean myself faster, but two minutes may be too fast. The book’s suggestion of four minutes makes more sense.  

The other thing I did was count all the light bulbs in my house. The book said to count all the CFLs (compact fluorescent lights) and all the normal lights. CFLs use 65-75 percent less electricity than normal bulbs, so there’s less energy, like oil, being used. I counted 90 light bulbs total. Of those, 11 were CFLs. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but the ones that are CFLs are the lights we use the most, which means we save more energy that way.

Another thing that the book said to do is to make sure to turn off all the lights that don’t need to be on. (While typing this, I turned off the lights in the same room I was in because the computer screen was giving off light. See, saving electricity isn’t hard.)