Summer green

With summer here and kids out of school, the focus of many families turns to entertainment. But having fun can also mean - literally - tons of trash. Here are some ideas for greening up your entertainment, courtsey of The Green Book.

Books
Use the library or buy secondhand books. Consider sharing the ones you have with friends or donating them, rather than throwing them away. About three billion new books are sold each year, requiring 400,000 trees to be chopped down.

DVD's
Rent DVD's instead of buying them. Depending on how much you watch one, you could save money too! The average movie rents for about $4 (and many online movie rental services are even cheaper!), while the average new DVD sells for more than $16. You also won't have to worry about contributing to their trash pile: 100,000 DVD's and CD's are thrown away each month. If you own DVD's that you want to get rid of, donate them to a local library or thrift store, or look for a DVD recycling center.

Tunes
Download tunes to an mp3 player instead of purchasing them at the store. The average price of a CD is $15, whereas an album download is about $10. Each month, more than 45 tons of CD's become obsolete, outdated, or unwanted - and end up in landfills. And when you upgrade your iPod or mp3 player, recycle your old one or return it to the manufacturer. Some companies give customers up to 10 percent off their next purchase when they return their old players. And about 40 percent of the lead in U.S. landfills comes from improperly discarded electronic waste, and the lead in turn pollutes the air and groundwater.

Candy
Buy loose, unwrapped candy from the bin, if you can. Many candy wrappers contain chemicals that make them stain- and water-resistant but also make them difficult to recycle.

Parties
Use electronic invitations (Evite is a great one!) or choose chlorine-free postconsumer recycled paper for your party invitations. (Better use of paper could allow the world's wood consumption to be reduced by 50 percent and possibily as much as 80 percent or more.) For your table, use "real" dishes, silverware, and glasses rather than plastic and paper. Each year, 40 billion plastic utensils are thrown into landfills across the country. You can also save money - using your own stuff is free, whereas the cost of plastic plates, forks, knives and cups for 50 meals could add up to $100.

Drinks on the go
If you have the choice, buy soda from the fountain in a paper cup instead of a can or plastic bottle. You'll reduce the amount of aluminum cans and plastic bottles that are wasted. More paper (48 percent more) is recycled and recovered to make new products than aluminum soda cans (43.9 percent) or plastic bottles (25 percent).

Tickets
Buy your movie and event tickets online or via telephone and print them at home. You'll save time and paper waste. Print-at-home tickets use plain copy paper, which is easier to make into recycled paper than the paperboard used for printed tickets. Some 1.4 billion movie tickets alone are sold in the U.S. annually - and almost every one of them goes in the trash can.