 Earth Day's campaign to attract pledges for a billion acts of green might seem unattainable at first, but there are many things we can all do to reduce our impact on the environment. Whether these are quick changes in the home, or more profound shifts in the way we live our lives, Earth Day is a chance to take stock of our current habits, and consider how we could be more green in the future.  The simplest place to start is at home, with activities the whole family can take part in until they become second nature. For example, turning off electrical appliances rather than leaving them on standby, can make a big difference to your household's energy use (and consequently to your bills). Greenpeace estimates that 12 per cent of all electricity use worldwide is taken up by appliances on standby - so flicking that switch can have a real effect.  For a sobering reminder of exactly how much juice your home is guzzling, try plugging in a home energy monitor (widely available online and from some energy suppliers), which will show your expenditure in real time. Directgov figures suggest the average household saves between five and 15 per cent on their bills during the first year of using a monitor - or between ?25 and ?75 on a ?500 bill.  Other simple acts that the whole family can get on board with include only filling the kettle with the amount of water you need (getting children to create reminder signs for the kitchen is fun for them and a handy aide memoire for coffee-deprived adults in the morning), and reducing the amount of hot water you use in the bathroom. "Showering is much better than a bath, but if you must have a bath, try not to make it too hot," says Steve Chasan of Ecohip (ecohip.co.uk), a company specialising in natural homecare and cosmetic products. "Up to a third of energy used in the average household goes on heating water."  For every room in the house, the other quick and practical change to make is to install energy saving bulbs. They're available cheaply from most supermarkets and do make a difference, saving you up to ?45 over the lifetime of the bulb according to the Energy Saving Trust.  Once your energy saving bulbs are spent (which should take a few years), they can usually be recycled. although kerbside recycling schemes are now part of everyday life for most of us there's still a lot that isn't taken - but which can be recycled at larger out of town centres. There's also the option of freecycling (freecycle.org), where unwanted items are simply given away to those with a use for them, keeping them out of the landfill sites. Similar to freecycling are websites allowing users to swap and borrow tools, equipment and other items - the borrowing site ecomodo.com allows users to create a lending circle with people they trust.  Naturally, we can't freecycle or borrow everything we need, but shopping can still be an environmentally conscious activity. Lush cosmetics has been creating innovative solutions to packaging for many years and encourages its customers to bring back their old plastic pots of moisturisers and lotions, which are then recycled into "pillars of fizz"; tubes to hold the company's signature bath ballistics. "We've seen a clear increase in the number of pots we get back," says Ruth andrade, who heads up the company's green initiatives. "People always want to do the right thing, you just have to give them the opportunity."  There are even opportunities to make your holiday greener, whether you're under canvas or aiming to stay somewhere swish. Website campingninja.com will let you search for eco-friendly sites that recycle, use local wood and produce solar power. In the city, Manchester's Midland Hotel - favoured haunt of novelist anthony Burgess - is one of the few UK establishments to attain the Carbon Trust Standard and a Gold award from the Environmental Business Pledge, growing its own plants and flowers and encouraging staff to use greener forms of transport.  Green transport is a clear way to reduce your footprint - walking and cycling where possible or getting public transport all make a difference, even if we only alter one journey a week. But an even greater change might actually come from moving towards a meat-free diet. according to some UN reports, the global animal farming industry is the cause of 18 per cent of climate change gases, compared to around 14 per cent for all transport and travel. a University of Chicago study even suggested that switching to a vegan diet would be more beneficial to the environment than switching to a hybrid car.  "The typical British diet takes about three times as much fertile land, fresh water and energy to produce as a well-planned vegan diet would," says 