What Earth Day Means to Me and My Earth Day Resolutions

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This will be the 40th anniversary of Earth Day!

To me this is an opportunity for us all to take stock or our impact on the Earth and resolve to take some actions to lessen it. The fact is our population just keeps growing and we are changing the environment. Loving nature as I do, I hope we all work towards minimizing our impact.

I hate being told what to do so I will just tell you what I am doing and hope that those who read this find something that they are inspired to do. I believe that if you really love nature, you will be inspired to take care of it. I spent so much time as a kid in streams, catching crawfish and salamanders and fish. I spent tons of time talking walks with my mother in the woods (even when I really wanted to be home playing Zelda!) I helped my mom grow many gardens. I went hiking and camping and I saw the beauty in it all. I loved it and was intrigued by it- no wonder that I was a biology major in college! I try to impart that my children by spending lots of time with them outside. Yesterday, we went to the nature center and caught tadpoles, fish, and salamanders! (We let them all go, of course.) They also got good and dirty digging in the dirt! Then in the evening we watered our garden together. I can't tell you how excited Sierra gets watching the plants. "Mama, come look, come look, the tomatoes have flowers!" Leo just wants to play with the worms, which I also think it great! Gardening also gives us cheap organic produce that they are excited to eat after helping grow it.

We also compost. It is easy to do and enriches your soil. It saves me all that waste and odors in my trash can and it saves me money on fertilizer! I keep it simple. Because we have a big back yard, we have a corner where we can just dump our leaves, lawn trimmings and all my fruit and veggie scraps. (My dogs eat any other left over scraps!) If you live in the city and don't have an area where you can dig your scraps into the ground, you can still compost! You can learn more at Composting 101.

I believe firmly in reducing, reusing, and recycling as much as possible. If you are not recycling, please start! Just imagine if everyone made this simple step. You will be amazed at how little trash you have once you start recycling and composting! The less processed packaged food you eat, the better! Not only does it reduce the waste that goes in the trash and recycling bins, it is also so much better for you to eat fresh foods! If you are done using something, bring it to Good Will and let it get used by someone else and pick up some items you need while you are there. Sometimes people think that shopping green is too expensive but shopping used is also shopping green! I think this is the area where people can make the biggest impact because if we modify a simple everyday behavior, it adds up to a huge contribution!

Earth Day is also a great time to take action and push climate and energy legislation forward. You can sign the Declaration of Energy Dependence here and/or click daily on the Care 2 widget at the bottom of my right margin. When you click sponsors purchase land to be preserved. You can also sign up for action alerts form Care 2.

Earth Day is also a great time to volunteer. You may love it and want to do it all year!


Happy Earth Day!! Continue the celebration all week with our blogging event. You can check out the itinerary here as well as link your blog up if you want to grab our event badge and make your own Earth Day post.


We also have a some generous green companies that are sponsoring giveaways each day so don't forget to check those out! Sprig Toys and Shaklee.

Please tell me what you are doing for Earth Day so we can inspire each other!