Bring smiles to your partner's face without making Mother Nature frown.

Don’t let your love for your partner get in the way of your love for the planet. With the right eco-conscious planning, Valentine’s Day can be as green as it is red.

In the United States, almost 20,000 floral shops produce nearly $400 million in cut flowers (wholesale value) for Valentine’s Day, estimates the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, its northern neighbor produces more than 13 million roses for the holiday, reports Statistics Canada. This is a lot of energy, shipping fuel and similar environmental expenditures, to say nothing of the millions of pounds of chocolate, jewelry and other gifts manufactured, shipped and given in Saint Valentine’s honor. This year, express the wide depths of your heart while narrowing your carbon footprint.

1. Ditch the online floral shops. While it may be convenient to click through an online site and have flowers shipped, the packaging and fuel emissions can be an environmental nightmare. Instead, support your local florists — which is nice to the earth and to the economy. It’s estimated that for every $100 spent at locally owned stores, $68 of that is invested back into your local community; online shopping leaves nothing for your town or city.

2. Read the flower labels. Not all roses are the same. Many come from chemical-intensive, mass-manufacturing hot house operations while others rely on extremely cheap labor. Please your partner and appease your conscience with organic and certified fair trade roses. Or, consider skipping roses completely, which avoids the entire issue of greenhouses/importing. Break tradition and show your lover how creative you are by creating a breathtaking bouquet using local, in-season flowers.

3. Use recycled paper. Hallmark estimates that it will send 144 million cards this Valentine’s Day. That’s just one greeting card company! To minimize your environmental impact, look for greeting cards made from recycled paper, make your own recycled cards or commission a local artist to make greeting cards crafted from recycled paper (starving artists need love, too).

4. Hail hemp. If you’re into the whole lingerie-gifting tradition, there are many manufacturers out there who craft naughty undergarments made from non-naughty, sustainable fibers such as bamboo or hemp.

5. Pay attention to the little things. Many small details add up when it comes to minimizing your carbon footprint. This includes using soy candles instead of traditioanl candles, choosing an organic bottle of wine or champagne, and using in-season produce for your special meal.

6. Just do it. One of the best Valentine’s Day gifts you can give your partner is quite eco-friendly. Once you turn off the lights, the only energy you’ll be burning is your own.

Recycling is potentially the easiest, fastest and most radical thing you can do for the benefit of the environment.

Recycling seems so easy. Instead of throwing your paper cup or empty soda can into the trash bin, you instead toss it into the blue bin with the funky arrows. The ease and effort at which we can all recycle, and the seemingly small difference it makes (“It’s just one can!”), belies the true underlying power of recycling.

The True Cost of NOT Recycling

1. Recycling saves energy. It often costs more to manufacture a new product from raw material than it costs to recycle an old product into a new product. For example, recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to provide three hours of power to the computer you’re reading this on. You can feel better about wasting all that time on YouTube now.

2. Recycling saves landfills. Americans generate billions and billions of pounds of solid trash every year, and approximately 70 to 80 percent of that ends up in landfills. But the country is rapidly running out of open landfills. Recycling helps divert as much solid waste out of landfills as possible, saving American soil and space.

3. Recycling creates jobs. And by god, we know how much our economy needs that now. For example, in Ohio, recycling plants generate an annual payroll of approximately $3.6 billion.

Four Easy Recycling Tips

1. Know the rules for your area. Some cities require users to sort their recyclables (e.g., keeping paper items separate from glass items) while other cities let you dump everything into one large bin.

2. Keep your recycle bin easily accessible. For example, if most of your recyclable items pass through your home office, store your bin in your office. By keeping it extremely accessible, you lower the temptation of throwing your items into the nearest trash can.

3. Let others do the recycling for you. When it comes to cans and bottles, many local nonprofits, charities and schools run regular bottle drives where they’ll come to your home and pickup your recyclable items.  Who knew laziness could net you so much good karma?

4. Keep your recycling clean. Many cities have rules for recycling, such as making sure rubber bands don’t end up in your paper recycling bin. Contaminants lower the quality and usefulness of the final recycled material, so do the environment a favor and make sure you’re only recycling what can be recycled.