The 22nd of April is officially recognised as Earth Day, our 52nd Earth Day! This day is meant to celebrate the environmental movement and is meant to raise awareness about the environment, encouraging people to act more responsibly. Many people do their best to be more environmentally friendly. However, this is not always the case. There are still a lot of people who need to learn about the environment and the impact of their actions. If you live in an eco-conscious city or you have friends or family members who are also interested in the environment (or even if you don't) there are a few things you can do to celebrate Earth Day. Here are some tips to help you celebrate Earth day with ease.
https://www.earthday.org/
1 Plant a Tree!
At SKOOT we love trees, they store and capture carbon, can cool down entire cities, support pollinators and provide a home for millions of animals. With SKOOT you can plant your own trees at our designated site in Kenya, Tudor Creek. With SKOOT you are not just planting trees, you are planting supertrees; mangroves.
Mangroves are 5 times better at removing carbon from the atmosphere than Northern hemisphere trees and in a Mangroves lifetime they will remove as much as 570kg of carbon. They are also brilliant at maintaining and re-establishing marine biodiversity. For example, they provide a nursery habitat for shrimp, crabs and other shellfish.
Visit the SKOOT shop today to plant a tree in celebration of earth day.
Or simply sign-up to our newsletter on the bottom of our main homepage and we’ll plant one for free for you.
2 Clean up rubbish in your town or local park
Cleaning up for Mother Nature is a great way to connect with and celebrate Earth. It doesn't have to be an organised cleanup, (but if there is one in your area, great!) You can just go on a walk with a rubbish bag and pick up any litter you see along the way. You will definitely notice just how much rubbish is tossed on the street or littered in the park.
Councils spent over £8m a year picking up our rubbish, apparently over 550 sacks of rubbish are collected each day from the side of UK roads, costing £40 per all simply because people throw or drop rubbish when out walking or driving.
If you want to be a little bit extra and celebrate even harder, you could even take two plastic bags one for recycling and one for non recyclables. Check out the recycling chart below to see what you can recycle.
(photo credit to St John Fisher College)
3 Ditch the car
Passenger cars amount to 52.4% of all greenhouse gasses caused by transport (which in turn is 25% of all carbon emissions) so it makes sense to eliminate this to celebrate Earth Day.
Try to take the train, the bus or cycle to work or school instead of polluting the sky with your car.
Did you know that just one litre of petrol produces around 2.31kg of carbon dioxide? Or in simple terms 1 mile = 300g of co2 and we need to plant 1 tree every 28 miles to remove it.
So by not driving for just one day you could be keeping many kilograms of carbon dioxide out of the air, especially if you have a long drive to work.
If there really is no other alternative than to drive, try to carpool, this would still reduce the number of cars on the road emitting carbon dioxide. SKOOT makes lift sharing easy, just download the app and use the built in lift sharing feature. SKOOT also plants a tree every time you drive so you would be killing two birds with one stone.
4 Switch your lights (off)
Lighting contributes to around 6% of global CO2 emissions, switching to LED lightbulbs keeps tons of CO2 out the air and reduces the number of polluting power stations. LEDS are 80% more efficient than fluorescent lights; they also reduce energy consumption by 80-90% and last 100,000 hours. LEDs are easy to buy these days and the price of them has decreased steadily as their benefits have become more well known.
When talking about lights, you could try and turn all your lights off for an hour during earth day as a symbol of your commitment to the planet. By switching off all your light for just one hour you can make a sustainable difference in energy consumption, helping to reduce the effects of global warming.
5 Go and Buy Local
Try to buy your fruit, veg or meat locally, not only are you helping small businesses but there are a multitude of environmental benefits to shopping locally (and seasonally).
Food in the supermarket travels an average of 1500 miles to get from the farm to the plate, in this process carbon emissions and pollution are released. Shopping locally reduces these emissions, it also means less waste. When food has to travel hundreds of miles lots of it gets damaged and spoiled meaning it is thrown away instead of sold. In an attempt to stop this happening, lots of packaging is used to protect the goods, all this additional packaging creates a considerable amount of land pollution. To avoid all this damage to the environment, go greener and check out the local farmers market.
6 Avoid Fast Fashion Go Vintage
Apparently the average item of cloth is only worn 14 times, and most young people consider an item worn a few times as old. Which means our landfills are filling up.
The environmental impact is staggering;
- 92 million tonnes of textiles waste annually, much of which is burnt or finds its way to landfill, while less than 1% of used clothing is recycled into new garments.
- 93 billion cubic meters of water
- 20% of industrial water pollution
- cotton production uses 6% of the world’s pesticides and 16% of insecticides.
- responsible for up to 10% of total global carbon emissions, and estimated to increase by 50% by 2030.
- 15% of total plastic use; the only sectors that use more are construction and packaging.
- four major online fast fashion brands, the use of recycled fabrics was a mere 4% (Shein’s only 0.5%)
- Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “clothes release half a million tonnes of microfibres into the ocean every year, equivalent to more than 50 billion plastic bottles”
The answer, eBay, Charity Shops, thrift shops or try one of the new rental fashion brands that have launched.
- Hurr
- Hirestreet
- Frontrow
- Baujken
- Rotaro
- Endless wardrobe
- By Rotation
- My wardrobe HQ
- Girl Meets Dress
- Blanqo
All these things are great ways to celebrate Earth Day 2022 but the best way to cherish the earth is to implement these things into your everyday life. Instead of being green on one day of the year, try and make every day a green day.
For more sustainable stories, tips and hints, check-out our blogs.
