With more and more pollution being released in the environment every day, people are starting to take notice and make changes to their everyday lives in order to shrink their carbon footprint.

There are some very easy things you can do to help. Something as simple as turning off a light when you leave the room saves energy.

Even junior high students have become conscientious about being green.

“I use blackle.com instead of Google,” says West Junior High School ninth-grader Devin Lohren.

Blackle.com is a Web site with searches powered by Google, but instead of the bright white screen that Google has, Blackle has an all-black screen that saves megawatts.

“I recycle, and I eat local foods,” says Cassidy Farwell, an eighth-grader at West. “Eating local foods helps because if you get food from other places they have to transport it here, and that uses a lot of gas.”

West seventh-grader Addison Boulart helps the environment by being vegan.

“Being vegan helps because most meat that you buy in grocery stores come from factory farming, which releases CO2 gasses into the air,” she says.

Here are some things you can do to help:

• Wash clothes in cold water to save energy from heating water.

• Take shorter showers — this helps reduce water use.

• Carpool: If you have friends who live near you and go to school with, give them a ride to help reduce gasoline use.

• Use a water filter to purify tap water instead of buying bottled water. Bottled water is more expensive and generates a large amount of container waste.

— Teanna Totten is a West Junior High School eighth-grader and member of Angle, the Journal-World’s teen advisory board.