Given that you7 are speaking about improving the life cycle and planting trees first, I would suggest trying to get more people to compost. Composting our own waste insures that it is not taken to massive dumping sites. Not only that, composters are far more considerate of the amount of their own waste products.

In more developed countries, people should buy and use less. Many people think that recycling is a good justification for acquisition; in other words, that it is acceptable to buy a lot of stuff, as long as you recycle it when you don't want it anymore. This is not true; producing and transporting goods has a cost to the environment, and recycling also takes energy resources. It would be better for the environment if people bought fewer things. For instance, paying more for a good quality pair of shoes and keeping them for a longer time is better for the environment than buying several pairs of cheaper shoes.

Expanding recycling is another course of action. More communities could provide programs allowing for the recycling of more types of materials. Research could be carried out to develop new methods of recycling more kinds of materials or to complete the recycling process with consumption of less energy.

It's going to be very, very difficult to get any country to significantly reduce its use of fossil fuels without some sort of major crisis that people actually "feel" happening in their lives. At some point, this will eventually happen. At that point we want to be ready to move as quickly as possible to develop alternative energy.

So, we need to continue to support the emerging energy sources with the realization that we aren't going to just wake up one day and find ourselves using wind and solar power for everything.

One thing that could speed the process up would be the development of an energy source that is cheaper than what we are currently using. Then voters would see an immediate benefit to something that would help us in the long term.

I think you are asking for ways we can improve the environment, since you mention planting trees. Another way is to reduce consumption of energy, including fossil fuels, and to recycle plastics and other materials.