Today marks the 49th annual celebration of our Earth. Since its start in 1970, Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22nd. It was proposed by John McConnell at a UNESCO Conference in 1969 as a way to honor the earth. Since then, 193 countries have included events to commemorate this day.

Here are some ways to celebrate and preserve our beautiful Earth-

• Clean up highways
  • Plastic pollution loves to build up on the sides of highways and other roads. It would be awesome to spend a few hours every week or month and try to clean up some of the litter surrounding roads with high amounts of pollution.
• Use less water
  • When you use less water, you prevent water waste and runoff. Try to limit the time you take to take a shower to around 5 minutes. The easiest way to conserve water when showering is to turn off the shower when you wash your hair or shave and then turn it back on to rinse. This prevents unnecessary water usage. The same thing goes for brushing your teeth or washing your hands.
• Shop at thrift stores
  • Shopping at second-hand stores not only help keeps clothing out of landfills, but it also is an affordable way to not support sweatshops and fast fashion. This is also a good reason to donate to thrift stores too. It also is super cheap and can be really fashionable.
• Try to eat less meat
  • Meat and the raising of livestock for food uses a lot of water and greenhouse gas emissions. Now, you don’t have to completely give up meat but maybe research into if a vegetarian lifestyle is something that you might be able to do. You could try to avoid meat on certain days or try some vegetarian dishes that replicate meat. Just make sure to do your research if you decide you want to convert to vegetarianism.
• Carpool
  • It’s easy to carpool at our age since most of our friends go to the same places (school, sports practice, the mall, etc.) we do. Carpooling decreases the number of cars that are on the road at one time which decrease the amount of greenhouse gases being produced. If you don’t want to carpool, you could opt to take the bus or, if you live close enough, you could bike.
• Remember the three R’s
  • It’s something that’s been drilled into us since we were in kindergarten: reduce, reuse and recycle. But do we really do that? Do you buy products with less plastic packing? Do you use a reusable water bottle? Do you recycle soda bottles or even body wash containers? Although the concept of reduce, reuse and recycle is something that we all can recall, most of us don’t live accordingly to these three simple words. It is important to keep in mind this alliteration so that we can help make the world a better place.

Check out the “Save the Sea Turtles” story in this upcoming Talon Times issue which comes out this Friday for more ways to protect our planet!