The shower is a sacred place, and we're not suggesting you swap your regular bathing routine for dreadlocks any time soon. You can, however, make a simple switch that will make your daily shower a lot more environmentally friendly.

One 15-minute shower with a standard showerhead uses about 37 gallons of water. If you switch to a water-saving showerhead, you use using 30 (or fewer!) gallons per shower, which saves about 2,700 gallons of water per year. And the benefits don't stop there: Many water-conserving shower heads have chlorine filters, which give you softer skin and eliminate frizz.

Before tossing your old products, consider upcycling them -- you save them from taking up space in landfills and create a new (and one-of-a-kind) product. Try these earth-friendly options:

- Melt your old, rarely used lipsticks and mix them to make a new color.
- Clean old mascara wands of their gunk and use them as brow brushes.
- Save your cracked eye shadow or foundation by adding a little rubbing alcohol to resolidify the powder.

If you don't upcycle, make sure you trash your plastic products the right way. Plastics marked with the numbers one and two are easy to recycle and accepted by most curbside pick-ups, but any other numbers are iffy.

Nail polish is pretty, but most formulas are a cocktail of chemicals that aren't so great for your nail health or the environment. Skip the polish (and the resulting fume-induced headache) and use a buffer to get shiny, healthy-looking nails.

New products, new formulas and new packaging means that the cosmetics industry pumps out about 100 billion units of packaging each year. All of those tubes, compacts, palettes and bottles (not to mention the packaging they're wrapped in) end up taking up a lot of landfill space. To shrink your cosmetic footprint, get every last bit out of your makeup products. Try using a wringer, like those used for toothpaste, on tubes, and an extended makeup sponge for products in jars, tubes or bottles.

Lay to rest forever your presumption that you need separate products to cleanse your skin and remove your makeup. Neutrogena has formulated a workhorse of a cleanser -- one that utilizes hydrating Peruvian tara seed, to clean, soften and moisturize skin while removing stubborn makeup. Plus, the multi-use feature of Neutrogena Naturals Fresh Cleansing + Makeup Remover means less clutter -- both in your shower and in landfills.