Celebrate Earth Day
Different Ways to Celebrate Earth Day
10 Recommendations to Celebrate and Change the Way You Live with the Earth
Earth Day is coming soon. It’s worthwhile to contemplate how we personally choose to acknowledge the day. It’s a perfect time to reflect upon the little changes that can be made to enhance our relationship with the environment. In case you’ve been too busy to think about the best way to celebrate, here are 10 recommendations.
1. Cook a Special Earth Day Meal: Plan a menu that uses locally produced foods, is healthy, and has minimal impact on the environment. Cook with as much organic food as possible.
2. Learn More About the Environment: Earth Day is a great time to make a commitment to learn more about the environment and how you can help protect it. Read about issues such as pollution, endangered species, water shortages, recycling, and climate change. Or learn about a region you’ve never considered before, like the Arctic, the deserts, or the rainforests. Think about the issues that concern you the most and if you haven’t done so already, join a local group that undertakes activities to help protect the environment in your area.
3. Clean up Litter from our Roadways: Many groups use the Earth Day weekend to clear roadways, highways and neighborhood streets from litter that has accumulated since the last cleanup day.
4. Plant Trees: Earth Day roughly coincides with U.S. Arbor Day, and has over time become synonymous with tree-planting. Planting trees helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, cleans up pollution, secures soil in place to prevent
erosion, and provides a home for biodiversity. If planting a tree seems like too much of a project, plant some flowers or shrubs, or even throw down a few seeds of grass. Everything matters.
5. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle…All Day Long: Buy as little as possible and avoid items that come in lots of packaging. Support local food growers, producers and products. Take your drink container with you to work, school or on a hike. Refrain from using disposable plates or cutlery. Recycle all the things you use during the day or find other uses for things that you no longer use. Such as a glass jar from the nut butter becomes a nice vase for flowers or container for nails. Carry a cloth bag for carrying things and recycle your plastic bags.
6. Ride Your Bike or Use Public Transportation: Use your bicycle or another form of human powered transportation to commute to work, run errands, or for play. If you don’t have a bike, at least give your automobile a rest for the day, and use some form of public transportation.
7. Set up a Compost Bin: So much of the stuff that we throw away can actually be composted instead of trashed. Set up a composting system — basically a bin in your kitchen where you put compostable waste, and a bin in your yard where it can decay — all of that rich fertilizer is free!
8. Update Your Light Bulbs: Now that incandescent light bulbs have been phased out, make certain that all of your bulbs are either Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), or light emitting diodes (LEDs). These choices use about 25 to 80
percent less energy and last three to 25 times longer than the typical incandescent bulb.
9. Pay Your Bills Online: Many people have started paying credit card bills and viewing statements online instead of receiving them through the mail. It’s faster than writing checks, and you don’t have to file away all that paper. A Fun Fact: if everyone in the United States paid their bills and chose banking online, it would save almost 19 million trees every year.
10. Skip a meal with meat: I was going to say skip a bath or a shower which you can do and would be helpful; however, it’s more important to skip a meal with meat because of the profound impact meat production has on the environment. If we want to change one daily habit that can shift the impact we have on the planet, we need to look no further than our plates. An average person consumes 7,000 animals in their lifetime. While the number is shocking, most people don’t consider the impact of consuming meat has on the planet. You’ll find that animal
agriculture is responsible for 51% of global greenhouse emission, fuel deforestation across the world and contributes to unprecedented levels of air and water pollution!
These are just a few things you can do to celebrate and embrace Earth Day. Perhaps these changes will endure as part of your daily lifestyle. There are many more that I’m sure you have thought of that I hope you will continue moving forward.
Another recommendation is to watch the BBC Special entitled “Planet Earth” . You can purchase it online – just engage Google and I’m sure you’ll find many options. You can also watch portions of the video on both the BBC and Discovery Channel websites. “Planet Earth,” is a nature series produced by the BBC that spans a five-year global
odyssey around the world highlighting stunning and even miraculous imagery of our planet. It has the power to reconnect you with the beauty and glory that we share with nature and all of her inhabitants.
Have a wonderful Earth Day Celebration, and remember – if we all do the little things, great changes occur.
Yum
