How to Celebrate Earth Day 2024

One of the most direct ways to make a positive impact on Earth Day is to get out there and clean up your neighborhood. Picking up litter in your neighborhood not only makes it look nice and clean, it can also help to protect local wildlife and ecosystems. You can even recruit a few friends or family to help. Cleaning up your local area is also a great way to set an example for others. Look out for clean up events in your neighborhood or start your own!

• Comfortable shoes
• Grabber arm or litter stick
• Hand sanitizer
• Eco-friendly water bottle to stay hydrated
• Sunscreen
• Sunglasses

Livestock like cattle and pigs produce a significant amount of methane, which can act as a greenhouse gas. Cutting back on the amount of meat you eat per week will help decrease greenhouse gasses. In celebration of Earth Day 2024, try going meatless for the day, or take it a step further and make Meatless Mondays a regular occurrence.

A large majority of the energy that powers our homes comes directly from fossil fuels. If we unplug our electronic devices, we reduce our home’s energy demand and carbon emissions. This Earth Day, spend time outdoors enjoying nature and limit screen time.

Trees can help reduce climate change as they remove carbon dioxide from the air, store carbon within themselves and soil, then release oxygen back into the atmosphere. Check your local area for nurseries and plant stores that are open.

Donating to an environmental cause can be the perfect way to lend your support to Earth Day — and it fits this year’s theme of investing in your planet. You can donate directly to the official Earth Day organization or find a related cause that you are most passionate about.

Earth Day Donation Suggestions

• Earth Day Official Site to go straight to the source
• Oceana, Ocean Conservancy, or Well Aware are great choices if you are passionate about water, like us as Aquasana 
• Use a service like Charity Navigator to find the perfect environmental charity near you

If you don’t have time to volunteer or have extra money to donate, you can still help to celebrate Earth Day by making an Earth Day resolution. Whether you pledge to cut down on water consumption, use less plastic, reduce energy consumption, or something else, every little bit can help when it comes to protecting our environment, wildlife, and natural resources.

• Limit your shower time to less than 8 minutes
• Only use reusable bags for shopping
• Don’t leave the faucet running
• Limit disposable water bottles and replace them with reusable bottles
• Turn off electronics and lights when you aren’t using them
• Reduce meat consumption, especially meats like beef that can produce a lot of methane
• Buy bulk foods to reduce your use of plastic containers
• Walk or ride a bike instead of driving a car
• Carpool to reduce emissions and gas consumption
• Recycle more
• Repair instead of replace
• Start a composting pile
• Pledge to swap out your household cleaning products with alternatives made from recycled and eco-friendly materials

For more Earth day resolutions and activities, check our EARTHDAY.ORG’s official tips page with ideas to make a difference and links to additional resources. In alignment with Earth Day 2024’s theme, there’s even a page dedicated to combating plastic pollution. The organization suggests to keep the six Rs in mind: reduce, reuse, recycle, remove, refuse, and rally. They even provide a plastic calculator to see how much you use and a Plastic Pollution Primer and Action Toolkit to start making a difference.

The Great Global Cleanup is a worldwide program that aims to remove trash from neighborhoods, beaches, rivers, lakes, trails, and parks. You can register for a clean-up near you to join the effort for Earth Day 2024.

The Global Earth Challenge is a coordinated citizen science campaign that started in 2020 and empowers people to help the scientific community by collecting data using a mobile app. Today, the project is trying to understand how insect populations like bees are changing, but they’re also collecting research on air quality, plastics, and food security.

People can download the app and take part in the challenge through four options:

• Classify: Identify pollution in pictures for ongoing research projects, and help researchers train machine learning models for the environment.
• Capture: Submit information including pictures from your area to assist researchers.
• Learn: Discover critically important environmental issues to make changes in your lifestyle and facilitate conversations with others.
• Act: Find local cleanup events and relevant environmental petitions to support.