Earth Day is coming up on April 22nd. Let’s celebrate this important day by going over a few things you can do to help keep our planet beautiful and safe to live on.

Earth Day Tip #1: Use Fewer Plastics

Plastic is a huge part of our culture. It’s a miraculous invention that makes it easy to carry and store food, drinks, cosmetics, toiletries, etc. The problem is the ratio of time plastic is used vs. the time it takes to decompose, especially with materials considered to be disposable plastics.

For example, take plastic bags you get at the grocery store. You might use them for a total of about 3 minutes:

• 1 minute of loading them from the grocery store counter to your cart
• 1 minute of loading them from the cart to your car
• 1 minute of loading them from your car to your kitchen counter

Once the food is unloaded, you’re done with them. Sure, some people reuse them for other things or recycle them at their local grocery store. However, recycling plastic bags isn’t easy, and most people are just throwing them away. Now you’ve used these bags for 3 minutes, but it will take 500 years for that bag to decompose in a landfill. Plus, it doesn’t completely break down – it will end up leaving microplastics that pollute the environment.

That’s just one example. Plastic straws, silverware, styrofoam trays, and cups are other plastic items we use for a short period of time but would take a very long time to degrade.

Earth Day Tip #2: Eat Locally Grown Food

When you take a trip to the grocery store, you’ll probably find food produced from all over the country. For processed foods, there isn’t much you can do. The companies have plants in certain places and may not have something local.

Some foods such as dairy, meat or produce are different. You can probably buy from local suppliers, which is beneficial in several ways:

• Fewer carbon emissions were required to transport the food
• The food is fresher and healthier for you
• It supports your local community

It’s a win-win-win.

Where do you get locally grown food? Google is your best friend. You may be able to find certain stores nearby that provide locally grown food, go to farmers markets or buy directly from a nearby farm.

Earth Day Tip #3: Donate Money and Time

The last thing we recommend is donating some of your money and/or time to an environmental organization.

As you do your research to determine which organizations are worth your money or time, you’ll learn a lot:

• You’ll learn more about the environmental challenges we are facing
• You’ll learn how organizations are fighting back against the negative environmental impacts we’re having
• You’ll feel a sense of pride knowing you are doing a good thing for yourself, your family, and mankind as a whole

There are a lot of great organizations out there, so we can’t recommend just one or two. But this is somewhere else where you can learn a lot with a few internet searches.

Conclusion

Let’s use Earth Day to remind us how important our environment is. We only have one Earth – we need to take care of it!