Make a clever 'green-inspired' Halloween costume and reap the benefits.

Simply ask. Request less packaging when you order your food to go. More than a third of office workers order in or carry out from a restaurant. If the takeout is just for you, tell the restaurant you need utensils for only one. If every worker did this, we could save twenty-five million plastic forks, knives, and chopsticks per day-enough utensils for three square meals a day for everyone in New York City.

Try to use fewer paper napkins. Each American consumes an average of 2,200 two-ply napkins per year, or just over 6 napkins per day. If each worker used just 1 fewer napkin per day, it would save about 150 million of them from the trash-enough to provide a napkin to every person who eats a hot dog on July 4.

Bring your lunch from home if you can. A disposable lunch creates between four and eight ounces of garbage every day. That can add up to as much as one hundred pounds per year! Bringing lunch from home could result in the US workforce saving more than ten billion pounds of trash-equal to the weight of the Great Pyramid in Egypt.

Litter. Dispose of waste properly. 94% of people identify litter as a major environmental problem. The biggest sources of this litter are cigarette butts, bottles and cans (including tops and ring pulls), candy wrappers, and fast-food packaging. More than two billion pounds of cigarette butts are discarded worldwide-about two pounds for every person in China.

Choose glass or ceramic containers that can be reused. They're healthier than plastic, and you'll reduce waste generated. Four out of five office workers share food brought in by fellow employees. Using glass or ceramic for this food reduces the possibility that you or your co-workers will be exposed to harmful seepage from plastic containers. You'll also avoid creating additional waste from disposable trays, plates, and containers.

Use silverware and plates, not plasticware, in the cafeteria if you have a choice. Even one office worker using just 1 plastic knife per day could add up to 250 a year. If every other worker used just 1 a day, it would amount to 15 billion plastic knives a year, enough to create a plastic blade 1.5 million miles long.

Use loose containers rather than individual packets of sugar or sweetener. When you use individual packets, you're using about as much packaging as the sweetener in it.

Don't use disposable stirrers. Just pour in your sugar and milk first then add coffee. Each year, Americans throw away 138 billion straws and stirrers, enough to make a giant straw statue, twenty times taller than the Statue of Liberty!

Mind the amount of water you use when brewing. Making coffee uses about a third of the tap water consumed in most of North America and Europe. If every worker cut back on water fill by one cup, we'd save almost ten million gallons per day. Over the course of a year, this would save enough water to provide two gallons to the 1.2 billion people on the planet who don't have access to safe water at all.