Earth Day is upon us, and the little voice in your head nagging you to do more for the planet is already exhausting you. But upping your eco-consciousness doesn’t have to be hard. Start with just a few of these easy ideas…then a few more...then…

You drink out of a ceramic cup at work, practice the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) pretty well and have replaced some of your home bulbs with CFLs. But hey, it’s a new year and a new decade—time to up the ante a bit. So we’re here to give a little nudge. Did you know that each of us produces more than four-and-a-half pounds of trash every day? Did you know that’s about 500 billion pounds annually countrywide? And did you know the highest point on the U.S. eastern seaboard is … a landfill? If we’ve got you thinking Okay, What else can I do? read on for ways to go the extra green mile.

Cut lunch trash by 67 pounds a year. The average American uses six paper napkins a day. If everyone used one fewer, more than a billion pounds could be diverted from landfills. So send your child to school with a Kids Konserve Waste-Free Lunch Kit. Made of recycled cotton, the adorable Butterfly & Caterpillar kit includes two stainless steel food containers and beverage bottle, a cotton napkin and a reusable food kozy to wrap sandwiches ($42, kidskonserve.com).

Ditch harsh chemicals. The enzymes in Earthworm Family-Safe & Fragrance-Free biodegradable products digest the buildup on surfaces naturally and eco-safely. Try the All Purpose Cleaner, Bathroom Tub & Tile Cleaner, Multi-Purpose Floor Cleaner, Mold & Mildew Treatment and Family-Safe Drain Cleaner ($5–$7, acleanearth.com and stores nationwide).

Get paid to recycle. Start a drive at your school to collect yogurt containers, drink pouches, chip, cookie and candy packages, plus Scott and Huggies wrappers and Elmer’s glue sticks and bottles. The school can earn 2 cents per piece of packaging (terracycle.net/brigades).

Nix plastic bags. Americans dispose of about 100 billion plastic bags annually. If you reduce plastic bag consumption by only two a week, you’d save enough to make a rope long enough to wrap around the earth more than 126 times! Instead use: Beneterre’s breathable mesh Farm Fresh Sacs for fruit and vegetable storage (6 large bags, $30) and natural cotton Wrapit sacks for snacks and sandwiches (5 for $30, beneterre.com); and natural cotton Ecobags Printed Reusable Bread Bag ($6) and Produce Bag Set for the market (printed set of 3, $14, ecobags.com).

Switch to e-banking. To save paper and gas, have your paycheck deposited directly to your account, and get bank statements and pay bills online. ATM receipts are one of the top litter producers. According to the eco-bible The Green Book, if everyone in the U.S. skipped the receipt, it would save a roll of paper long enough to circle the equator 15 times.

Conserve water. Take a shorter shower and save five gallons of water a minute. Also try flushing one less time a day and you’ll save 4.5 gallons of water.

Install a water filter. About 1.5 million tons of plastic are used for bottling 89 billion liters of drinking water each year. If everyone in the U.S. drank filtered tap instead of bottled water, it would save about $8 billion a year—and the 60 million water bottles that are tossed each day. On the go? Use the Wellness H2.O water bottle to replace 1,100 plastic bottles and save about $1,000; it‘s made of recycled materials and features a unique filtration system that eliminates chlorine, lead and toxins ($30, endbottledwater.com).

Skip the beef. It takes about 5,000 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. Soybeans require about 240 gallons of water per pound and wheat only requires 25 gallons. Cutting just two pounds of beef from your diet would save enough water for a five-minute shower every day for an entire year. For some tasty alternatives, check out Morningstar Farms products in the freezer aisle of your grocery (morningstarfarms.com).

Stop wasting watts. Instead of wasting hundreds of watts of power with every flick of the light switch, try Sentina Smart Rechargeable LED Light (92M) motion sensitive spotlight. Plug it into an outlet and each time you pass through a dark hallway, it turns on for a minute. Bonus: It automatically lights up in a power outage, and its emergency flashlight lasts eight hours ($30, sentinasmart.com).

Want to go a step further?

The Green Book provides practical advice on little things you can do to minimize your impact on the environment, cites fascinating facts about the waste in this country (the average American family has 10,000 items in their home; worldwide it’s 127) and shares essays from celebrities who explain their passion for saving the planet ($5, Kohl’s stores and kohls.com).

Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth teaches all the basics ($11, amazon.com) or go to epa.gov/osw/conserve/rrr/composting/.

Jordan & Justine’s Weekend Adventures series, by Tanille and Latoya Edwards, include the bilingual stories Go Go Green, Plants Parts 1 & 2 and Wildlife Parts 1 & 2 ($13 each, amazon.com).