Personal action

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

--Margaret Mead

What you can do about air pollution

There are many small, but critical sources of air pollution in our homes and neighborhoods. Such sources — vehicles, construction equipment, lawn mowers, dry cleaners, backyard fires, and auto-body shops — are located where we live and work.

Citizen water monitoring

Citizen monitors gather vital information about the health of our water resources.

Resourceful decorating and creative reuse

Creative reuse — taking discarded, worn, or broken items and creating new products — can help you stretch your budget and keep materials out of the trash.

Five high-impact actions you can take

Try out these 5 ideas that can help you save money and protect the environment.

The Repair (r)evolution

Tinkering. Being handy. Repair manuals. The town repairman. Valuing well-made belongings. These classic values and skills suffered in rise of the “cheap and disposable” culture. People forgot how to tinker, and even lost the urge to fix. But it’s making a big comeback!

Get involved

The responsibility to protect and restore Minnesota’s land, water, and air falls on all of us, not just environmental professionals. In fact, it's the combination of many of us, outside of our paid work, that can have the greatest impact.

Greening your next move

Moving can be exciting, stressful, fun, challenging, and rewarding. It can also be expensive and time-consuming and can generate waste, pollution and greenhouse gasses.

Too much junk mail?

Direct mail—catalogs, flyers, credit card offers, memberships to clubs and organizations of all kinds—makes for a lot of paper and plastic waste in the typical household. For many, these offerings are an interesting addition to the mail pile. But for some of us this mail is unwanted and unwelcome.