5 Fun events to do on Earth Day, or anytime of the year!

Started in 1970, Earth Day began as a protest to industrial development and has evolved to become a worldwide event where everyone takes time to recognize all the support mother earth gives us and a time to give back to her as well. While mainly an environmental event, Earth Day also celebrates the incredible diversity we have on our planet and encourages everyone to take proactive steps to maintain that diversity as we are constantly combatting climate change, deforestation, and species loss.

Anyone and everyone can support Earth Day, or earth week, or the earth at any time of the year!

I'm sure that everyone has already heard of the benefits of adopting a plant forward diet and of reducing food waste, water consumption, and fuel emissions. Living zero waste is a trend on the rise as more and more people are looking at their plastic consumption and rethinking what it means to be a consumer. If you guys want me to cover any of these or related topics more in depth I would be happy to, just leave a comment below!

Anyways, so what can you do this Earth Day?

A few suggestions are:

1. Have a community trash clean up to green up your neighborhood!

Make it fun by having a potluck afterwards or prizes for the person who picks up the most cans or finds the most unusual item. One year at a trash clean up in my area there was a tie for the weirdest item between someone finding a pair of underwear and another person finding an entire mattress. Also, cleaning up pays in more ways than one! Twice on waste sorts I've found $5 and I know someone once found a $20 bill on the side of the highway. Sweet, right?

2.Hosting a swap night with friends is a fun way to promote recycling and reuse of items instead of the linear consumption economy.

This event is a blast when you can get a really large group of people together, and it's not limited to your typical clothes swap, literally anything works! This event is also prefect if you've started to do some spring cleaning and want to get rid of some of your items. (check out my previous blog post : How to Host a Successful Swap Night )

3.Volunteering at a shelter is a great way to give back to the community and support the animal rescue movement. Also, what better way is there to get in some puppy and kitty love? (Especially if you're like me and are a poor college student going through pet withdrawals. ) If you like animals more on the exotic side, see if there's a wildlife sanctuary or reserve that you could go to. In my experience, most places are more than happy to have an extra pair of hands even if it's only for a few hours.

4.Plant a tree! This is probably what everyone thinks of when they envision Earth Day events, but that doesn't make it any less good ! The world can always use more trees or any sort of plants, and yes, I may be slightly biased because I'm a plant biology. Anyways, go out and get some seeds or seedlings and get your hands dirty! Plants are amazing for so many reasons, from the basis of photosynthesis by creating the oxygen we breathe, to the food aspect of producing fruit or seeds that we can eat, and so much more.

(Seriously, I could go on about this forever. I physically had to stop myself from wiring and then go back and delete a few paragraphs to keep this post from being to long. So watch out for some fun future blogposts about how cool plants are.)

5. Turn Earth Day into an Earth Week with challenges where you try to do something eco-friendly every day. It can be simple things like not using any single use plastics one day or decreasing your shower time to less than five minutes a day. You could do a different event each day or take on one challenge to do for the whole week, like giving up dairy or being vegetarian for a whole week.

If you need some inspiration, check out the poster I made below that's filled with fun hacks and helpful tips!

There's a ton of great recourses out there and honestly, anything helps! Some quick google searching can give you a million more ideas on how to help the earth, check out PLAN's (Post Landfill Action Network) zero waste campaign and also your local environmental groups page in your town or college, like UVM Eco-Reps at the University of Vermont.

I hope you all have an amazing Earth Day and get out there and do something to help our planet!