Habitually Good

Here is a list of ideas of activities that you can do on Earth Day and the rest of the year. We should go out of our way to make an impact and spread awareness. Remember, any big problem (such as saving the planet) starts with baby steps, so let’s take ours and hope that enough of us take these steps to make a planet saving difference.

These are various things that could think of. Please add your ideas in the comments.

Spread Awareness

• Call up 10 people you know and ask them what their planet saving resolution for Earth day is. If they are not sure what you are talking about, explain to them the concept of Earth Day, and also tell them that this is a great excuse to make a resolution (such as one you make on new year) to start doing something about the planet. If they are not convinced, throw out some of the facts about how the planet is fast tracking towards complete destruction (see facts below). If they need ideas on what to do, show them this article.
• Do you have a blog? Write an article on it, like I am doing here. Make a convincing case for your readers that they really have to do something on Earth Day. Do you have a podcast? publish one for the Earth Day. Do you have a website? Put on an Earth Day banner. Are you on Twitter? Tweet this post.
• Get your HR department to conduct an activity for all employees in the office and thus spreading awareness.
• Make sure you update your Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, etc. statuses to reflect a message that tells people about what you have done on Earth Day, and asks them to do something as well (e.g. I adopted a Panda, what have you done?)
• Send out a mail each on all your mailing groups talking about Earth Day and the importance of saving the planet.
• Wear clothes with Earth Day messages. Have bumper stickers on your car for the Earth Day. Fly the Earth Day flag from your balcony.

Act

• Say no to plastic, seriously. Start carrying reusable bags with you so that you don’t need to use a plastic bag.
• Plant 10 trees. This helps prevent soil erosion, cleans pollution, and provides home for insects, birds, etc. increasing the biodiversity of the area.
• Read on 5 different issues concerning the environment and therefore learn about the problems that are ailing the planet, and what you can do to help. If you are in Gurgaon, India, two very important topics that everyone should know about are rainwater harvesting and garbage disposal.
• Change all your lighting in the house to energy efficient lighting. CFLs and energy star rated lighting may cost you a bit more up front, but will pay off more than their cost over the life of their operation in terms of reduced electricity consumption.
• Organize a community cleanup campaign – put together groups and pick up litter from roads and parks and dispose of it properly.
• Adopt a wild animal which is endangered. One great source for this is the WWF site: http://www.worldwildlife.org/how/index.html. Most people don’t realize how important wild animals are to the survival of the planet.
• Save fuel consumption. Start a carpool for going to office, school, etc. Turn off your engines at long traffic stops. Drive moderately. Get a car which is fuel efficient, hybrid, or electric.
• Optimize your house hold heating and/or cooling. Make sure you don’t keep your refrigerator door open more than necessary (or better, be quick about it when you open your refrigerator). Make sure your windows and doors are closed and you don’t move in and out of a cooled or heated room too frequently. If you are using an air conditioner, try to set the temperature to a couple of degrees above what you normally would (and vice versa if you are using a heater).
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – Use as little as you can. Reuse as much as you can. Recycle what you don’t need and buy recycled products.
• Use Google to search for the usual keywords such as “How to save electricity?”, or “How to save water?” or “How to save fuel?” and so on. Look through the top 5 results, and adopt at least 1 suggestion from each of your searches.

Points to Ponder

• If you are on a cruise on a luxury ocean liner, in one week, your ship generates 800,000 liters of sewage, 3.8 million liters of gray water (from showers, sinks, washers, etc.), 150,000 liters of oily water, and over 8 tons of solid toxic and non-toxic waste. There are hundreds of these ships in the world (do the math).
• Over 1,000,000,000 (One Billion) plastic bags are used every day. That’s over 10,000 bags a second. And this is in the US alone. Around the world, each year we use between 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags (over a million per minute).
• Energy needed to create 1 new can = Energy needed to create 20 recycled cans.
• Recycling 1 ton of paper = Saving 17 trees.
• In the US, a 100 million trees are chipped down each year to produce junk mail.
• Pollution of drinking water is a problem for over half the world’s population with 5-10 million people dying each year from water-related diseases.
• Each year, plastic in the water kills 100,000 marine mammals (whales, dolphins, etc.), 1 million sea birds, and countless fish.
• 40% of the rivers in the United States are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life.

This post barely scraps the surface of the problem. But, we need to keep trying, and so here we are. Please leave your ideas in the comments on what you are going to do on Earth day or what you suggest every one can do.

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