1. Try a green spring clean.

Green cleaning is easy on the wallet, easy on your health and easy on the environment. The heart of the green cleaning kit: baking soda and white vinegar.

Baking soda, a mild abrasive, can be used to clean almost anything from bathtubs to countertops. Just apply to a damp sponge, scrub and rinse. It also removes stains, deodorizes and softens fabrics

White vinegar (5 percent acetic acid) is a mild disinfectant and good for cleaning glass, polishing silver and mopping floors. When cleaning glass, dilute with four parts water.

If you are going to choose packaged products, avoid harsh chemical and synthetic fragrances. A good first step: avoid products that come with warning signs like 'poison' or 'danger' or 'corrosive.' It's a good bet they contain toxic chemicals, or, at the very least, present a direct exposure risk to you.

For more cleaning tips and recipes, click here.

2. Cut out bottled water

Clean water is a human right - not a commodity. Right now, the bottled water industry pumps billions of litres of water - water that belongs to everyone - out of underground aquifiers each year and sells it back to us for profit.

In addition to charging money for a public resource, bottled water companies are responsible for hundreds of millions of virgin plastic bottles. According to the Earth Policy Institute, manufacturers use 1.5 million barrels of oil each year to produce bottled water for the US bottled water market alone.

If the water in your community is safe to drink, try tap water. Carry a portable water bottle with you where you go (just remember to ditch your #7 plastic bottles - they are almost always polycarbonate and contain bisephenol A, a chemical recently listed as a toxic substance in Canada).

It should also be noted that the use of chlorine to treat water is also a long-term concern. For personal use - and, again, in jurisdictions that are not suffering from boiled water advisories - you might want to consider using a well-maintained home filtering system.

For more information about issues of water privatization, visit: www.blueplanetproject.net

3. Reduce (or give up) meat. Reduce (or give up) driving.

This has become the green tips mantra, we know, but these two closely-related activities are not just bad for the environment, they are leading to food shortages around the world.

Right now, the distinction between food and fuel is slipping away. In a weak and ill-advised attempt to address climate change, governments have been encouraging the development of 'biofuels' - fuel made from food crops like corn and wheat. As a result, food crops are being diverted for use in cars, world food prices are skyrocketing and food shortages are taking root around the world.

The growing demand for meat is also straining the world food supply. Vast amounts of grain must be fed to cattle, for example, to produce even a small amount of animal protein for human consumption. According to the Worldwatch Institute, the total amount of soy and grain fed to livestock in the US each year could feed everyone on the planet approximately five times over.

In combination, the rise of both meat consumption and biofuels is having devastating consequences. Right now, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is warning that it lacks the resources to keep up with rising food prices and shortages which it attributes to a number of factors including climate change, the increased demand for animal feed and biofuels. The WFP says it's currently facing a half-billion dollar shortfall to meet 'existing assessed needs.'

There are many reasons to limit driving (greenhouse gas emissions, smog) and meat consumption (greenhouse gas emissions, the destruction of ancient forests for cropland), but the growing food shortages should be the last straw for everyone.

For more on biofuels read this article in the Guardian , this article in the Globe and Mail and this backgrounder from Greenpeace International.

For more from the World Food Programme, click here.