You love visiting the beautiful Alabama beaches for a vacation, so why not help protect it even when you’re back home?

You can do that when you use environmentally-friendly practices all year long. Check out these small choices that can make a difference by reducing your carbon footprint.

First, use canvas bags instead of plastic ones when you shop at a grocery store or dollar store. Shoppers use 500 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) plastic bags each year. It’s estimated that 100 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean. As many as 1 million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die each year when they become trapped in plastic or eat it, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation campaign.

The next way to help is to recycle. Anything that doesn’t end up in the landfill or groundwater helps protect the environment.

Another way to help is to use natural cleaning materials and watch where chemicals drain into waterways. You know that line from “Finding Nemo” that says, “all drains lead to the ocean”?  Keep that in mind anytime you pour something into a sink or watch water run into a storm drain.

Let’s all do our part to protect our fragile environment and keep our beaches and waterways beautiful for years to come.