10 Suggestions To Make Earth Day Time-Less: Earth Day is Every Day

While Earth Day is the 22 April of each and every year we cannot leave it at that because in truth and in fact, Earth Day is every day. 

Our activities have to be time-less so that they are continually evolving, viable, impactful and useful and evergreening our planet in the years to come.

Saving Mother Earth is an ongoing process - it never stops until we all get it!  In this vein, here are my 10 suggestions to make Earth Day timeless.

1 - Rachel Erdstein of Ann Arbor dot com suggests books for the young and not so young to increase environmental awareness like "City Green" by Dyanne DiSalvo Ryan, "Where Once there was a Wood" by Denise Fleming and "The Salamander Room" by Anne Mazer.

Or books by Carl Hiaasan - "Hoot," "Scat" and "Flush," and books by Lauren St. John - "The White Giraffe" and "Dolphin Song" are thrilling and mysterious adventures in which environmental issues and wildlife conservation are in the forefront. And those are just a few of her suggestions.

2 - Envirolink provides an Organizer's Guide for social and environmentally sustainable activities in the home, school and community, and what's great is that they also provide contact information for the various groups, companies and organisations with whom you can connect. 

Their ideas are practical for adults and includes children of all ages such cleaning up garages, lakes, rivers etc., petitioning your local politician, using paper bags on Earth Day, organising food fairs with local or area organic farmers; schools and communities can organise an Earth Day Pledge, and so on. Wonderful!

3 - Kaboose dot com proposes activities such as crafts, environmental games and recycling activities aimed at the kids from creating crafts from nature, go green checklist for the home, best organic foods, creating tree and animal pictures, and special games for Earth Day, cleaning the home with only green products. Lovely stuff and by the way, the crafts can be gift items for the holidays.

4 - AboutMyPlanet's Daily Green Tips Gloria Campos has 22 suggestions from creating a compost heap, cleaning out your house and having a garage sale, planting a tree, to replacing light bulbs with energy efficient ones.

5 - FamilyCraft Earth Day Craft Projects provides clear instructions for the kids on how to create specific crafts for Earth Day - offer them as holiday gifts - and save money on gift shopping!

6 - The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide offers 10 tips for Earth Day. Buy organic food, eat more veggies, educate yourself about the planet and what you can do for it from "green" websites, advocate for the serving of locally grown foods in our favourite restaurants. For instance, garlic from China is unacceptable.

7 - EarthDay Canada provides 10 whopping great ideas which have immediate and long-lasting effects and are sustainable. Wash a full load of clothing in cold water and air dry (where you can),  take short showers instead of baths, close the tap when brushing your teeth, and so on.

8 - ApplesForTheTeacher provides numerous suggestions for parents and teachers activities which would help the environment such as go green by giving to charity, a family chores day, composting 101, tips for a family garden, eco-friendly cleaning products, etc.

9 - My own suggestion is to thank Mother Earth for your meals every time you sit down to eat and teach it to the children. I learned the following from a shaman a few years ago and it sets up a powerful energy that is worth cultivating. It goes like this:

Thank you Mother Earth for this meal. It nourishes my body to perfection. Whatever my body cannot absorb is gently and efficiently eliminated.

10- Inform yourself on the issues you are concerned about and don't take anyone's word for it. The internet contains a lot of factual information but also a lot of garbage.

However, most official documents, science papers, journals, magazines like National Geographic which contain facts and viewpoints are in the public domain so there's no reason to not support your favourite cause. Stand up, and get your kids and your community involved.

To this end, here are a few informative articles and videos:

• Alison-Rose Levy's (beautiful name!) To Detox Our Bodies, Detox Our World
• John Kerry's The Power of Earth Day
• The Oceans - 9 Reasons Why Blue is the New Green
• Segourney Weaver's Protecting Our Oceans
• Oprah's Earth Day Special (video) Dolphin Slaughter
• 7 of the Most Intelligent Ocean Animals (video)
• Julie Packard's For Earth Day: A Simple Step to Save the Oceans

Enjoy, participate, activate, in your own unique way to protect this blue Earth - we are the envy of all - and make Earth Day Time-less.

How do you contribute to create a sustainable, eco-friendly environment in your home, workspace or community?

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Going Green Workouts and Food : Get Yourself in Gear

As I educate myself on going green, I figured I'd take you all along for the ride as well.

I've included some links below which include simple and easy ways to have green workouts: 1) use metal bottles instead of chucking the plastics every day, 2) use recycled gym mats, 3) go to a gym closer to home and walk there, 4) exchange/swap used equipment and lots more.

Then there's eating green to save our planet too. 1) How about going vegan? If that's too hard, 2) how about ordering less takeout, 3) compost uneaten food instead of putting it in the trash, 4) buy food in season and buy local?

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Going Green : Eliminate Plastic Bags - New Delhi and Belgium Penalize It's Use

In January 2009, the Government of India imposed a ban on the use of all plastic shopping bags in it's capital city of New Delhi - population 14 million.

A new industry now recycles newspapers into shopping bags. The bags tend to fall apart at the glued seams if they get wet or if the shopping is too heavy. However, Indians are extremely good at innovation and they will come up with a solution that works. I'm looking forward to it spreading to the rest of the country.

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