Earth Day: Easy Sustainability Tips for Everyone
What is Earth Day?
Since 1970, Earth day is held on 22nd April every year and it is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement. We all know that our world needs transformational change and Earth day empowers us all to recognise the influence we have on the future of our planet as a consumer, a voter, and a member of a community that can unite for change.
Every Earth Day can drive a year of energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to create a new plan of action for our planet and inspire the next generation too.
How to get involved- great for kids too!
Litter picking.
Use the 22nd April as an opportunity to go for a walk in your local community with a bin bag and see how much waste you can clear. Doing this as a family is a great way to have discussions about why it is important not to litter as it harms wildlife and also how long each piece of waste will take to biodegrade.
I remember as a child, my dad used to pick up rubbish off of the floor outside our house and I used to think it was so weird that he did that. After lots of conversations with my dad about it, I realised that his dad also did it and that my dad had the same conversation with his dad when he was a boy. Obviously it would be a more wonderful earth if no one dropped litter ever, but for the time being we can all do our bit to clean up the areas we walk and educate younger people to not drop litter in the first place.
Plant a bee friendly gardens
Wild bees and other pollinators are in decline largely due to pesticides and loss of wildflowers. But there are lots of things you can do in your garden to help make your garden bee-friendly. Aim for a good variety of pollen-rich flowers that have different flower shapes and a range of flowering periods from early spring to late summer and even throughout the winter if you can. To keep the bees fed throughout the seasons. I’ve added a wildflower seed mix to the webshop recently and it’s been so popular. Click here to read more about these packets of wildlife joy.
Bumblebee species have different length tongues that are adapted to feed from different shaped flowers. For example, the longest tongued species, Bombus hortorum, prefers deep flowers such as honeysuckle and foxglove.
In general, avoid plants with double or multi-petalled flowers. Their flowers are filled with petals and pollinators find them difficult to access. The flowers also often lack nectar and pollen.
Most importantly don’t use pesticides as these kill bees and always plant peat free!
Walk
In 2014, more than 40% used cars for journeys of less than 2 miles that could just as easily be walked. For every mile walked instead of driven, nearly one pound of pollution is kept out of the air. Emissions from cars and other vehicles contribute to climate change by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They also contribute to emissions of other pollutants such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide, the latter contributing to smog and acid rain. Making short journeys by car causes more pollutants as catalytic converters designed to reduce these pollutants do not work effectively on trips under 5 miles. Teach children the importance of walking short journeys and point out things on the way to make it interesting.
Recycle & Reduce
We all know that we should recycle rather than send things to landfill, but many don’t know the huge impact it can have. For example recycling one tin can will save enough energy to power a tv for three hours. Even better than recycling is to look through our common shopping items and see what sustainable swaps you can make. A reusable bag will save 600 plastic bags from being made in its lifetime. Currently 1.5 billion plastic bottles are used each day. Nonprofit organisation Oceana estimated that just a 10% increase in the share of soft drink beverages sold in refillable bottles could decrease marine plastic pollution by 22%. This would keep 4.5 to 7.6 billion plastic bottles out of the ocean each year. A reusable water bottle takes less oil to produce, replaces all the plastics that you would have used and thereby reduces both your carbon footprint and helps reduce the plastic burden on landfills, oceans, streams and other places that plastic waste ends up. In your bathroom there are probably many bottles of toiletries that could be replaced with sustainable alternatives. Use a bar of soap/shampoo bar instead of shower gel/shampoo in a bottle to save a significant amount of plastic waste year on year. Using a reusable razor over a disposable one will save countless tons of plastic over the course of a lifetime. We can all make significant changes to our habits and earth day is a great opportunity to take inventory and do better moving forwards.
Did you know that the UK sends roughly 2/3’s of it’s landfill waste to other, less economically developed countries!!!!!!
The less waste we produce, the better!
Plant a tree together
You may have read our latest blog post about the problem with planting trees and be a bit confused to see this one listed. Planting trees with a family or even your local community can be a great way to have the conversation around the importance of trees, what they do for us and why we should protect them. Deforestation is a huge factor in climate change so actively having conversations around the importance of trees, while planting one in your garden or local area can be a small step in the right direction. Just avoid greenwashing claims by big businesses whose tree planting schemes can often do more harm than good and cover up a whole host of other sustainability issues.
Digital detox
Shutting down a computer when it's not in use cuts the energy consumption by 85 percent. Use Earth day as a chance to break away from screens, get outside and enjoy the spring air. We look after the things we value and as a society we have criminally undervalued nature for long enough. We need to get back to basics and enjoy simple pleasures such as the sun on our faces, the birdsong and the hopeful renewal of each season.
On that note, I will sign off and say thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this article and please feel free to share the ideas with your friends. Lets face it, earth Day is every day and it seems a shame that we need a day to be reminded how amazing nature is, but if having a day for us all to take stock of where we are will help make big shifts in our battle against climate change, then I am all for it.
