Deforestation is easily preventable -- small changes in your everyday life can vastly decrease the growing issue. Deforestation is clearing earth's forests on a massive scale.

1. Go paperless!

The average office worker uses 10,000 pieces of paper yearly. That’s the equivalent to an entire tree. Imagine how much paper we use as college students! Including faculty and students, if each of us went paperless we could approximately save 3,000 trees a year. Instead of lugging around notebooks to each class, take notes on your laptop. This will allow you to stay green and will even help you to be organized.

2. Recycle!

Ever since grade school we have been told to reuse, reduce and recycle. Instead of writing it off as another topic to be stored away, this simple trick really does help the environment. The U.S. State Department estimates that forests four times the size of Switzerland are lost each year because of deforestation. Using recycled products helps conserve natural resources such as timber, water, and minerals. Next time you take a water bottle to class, instead of throwing it in the trash when you are done, fill it back up and use it for the rest of the day. Instead of throwing away old notebooks, recycle them and they can be reused in many uses including; new notebooks, tissues, books and even newspapers. This will cut down the use of timber used around the world and our forests can be repopulated.

3. Be aware of the products you buy!

When shopping try to avoid products that include palm oil. Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil that comes from the palm fruit, grown on the African oil palm tree. The World Wildlife Fund has discovered that approximately 300 football fields of rain forest is cleared each hour to make way for palm oil production. Palm oil is used in various products including; lipstick, pizza dough, shampoo, chocolate and even instant noodles. All you have to do is read the label of products before you purchase the item. It will only take a minute out of your daily shopping routine to help save trees around the world.

Small changes in your everyday life can help impact the world in a positive way. After integrating these simple steps into your everyday life after a while will become a habit. These are good habits to develop now to reduce your own carbon footprint and to help reduce deforestation. Your small changes will change the giant picture for the better.