April 22 marks the 33 Earth Day in the United States. The idea for a day dedicated to the
environment originated 7 years earlier by Senator Gaylord Nelson. He was concerned over the lack to awareness
and regulations of the pollutants being released into our world.
Now more than 30 years later, Earth Day and its organizers
have increased public awareness of pollutants, identified and promoted “green”
acts, have leveraged our schools and communities to enhance the knowledge and
dedication of our youth to the cause, and countless other accomplishments.
The Earth Day website (http://act.earthday.org/)
is tracking personal pledges to commit “green” acts. The pledges include recycling grocery bags,
unplugging appliances, recycle paper and plastic, and buying more local
food. While each of these acts may seem
futile on their own, the impact of the collected group across the globe will
have a significant impact on our environment, especially over an extended
period of time. To date the website has
over 1 billion personal pledges.
What do you think of Earth Day? What are some additional ways we can support
Earth Day at school and in our community?
What are things you do at home?
Are there any additional activities you would be willing to commit to at
home to support “green” living?
Ryan- I think earth day is great. Although I think there shouldn't be just one day for the earth. It's like someone does something on earth day and nothing else on any other day. They just don't really think about it. I think that we should have a garden some where I don't know where. Where the students care for the plants and learn more about our earth.I think the community already had a garden, but we could raise awareness of the subject. We recycle, spare water, and use reusable containers. We could clean the Green belt or maybe plant stuff.
ReplyDeleteGrace- I think Earth Day is important. It reminds us that the Earth is living too, and that we need to take care of it. I think at school we could definitely work on reducing. We waste so much paper at school by not printing double-sided sometimes, clicking 'print' multiple times so it prints numerous copies, and other things like that. I think that as a community we should start a tree farm. It could be a club that people join. The club members could make a pledge that every time they buy a pack of printer paper then they have to plant a tree or something along those lines. I actually do a lot of little things at home. I use reusable bags when I go to the grocery store; if I forget those bags, then I always use paper bags, never plastic. I try to remember to turn off the lights when I leave a room. I also never let the water run when I'm brushing my teeth or washing my face. I keep things that might have the potential to be used in a craft instead of buying new stuff. For sports, I always fill a reusable bottle instead of the plastic water bottles. Of course I also recycle. This year my mom is trying to start an herb garden; I want to help out with that. Also, when I'm waiting for the water to heat up, I'm going to try to remember to fill a jar with the running water. I can use that water later to water the herbs instead of just letting it run.
ReplyDeleteAubrie- I think Earth Day is a great thing to have in the US.I think that this shows that we really care about the world and taking care of it to generations to come. Some additional ways that we as a community can help support Earth Day in our homes and in our schools is to put up an Earth Day flag. This will show people how much you care about the Earth. Another way that we can remember Earth day is that we can read books,tell stories, watch documentaries on Earth Day. These are only some of the ways that we can remember Earth Day. At my house we recycle allot and try to as much as possible. My family also try's to reuse some things. This is how my family helps the Earth to stay more "green." If I could help my family to become more "green" i would try to limit the amount of fossil fuels we use per day. And this is what I would do.
ReplyDeleteThomas B- I think it is a great way to remind people to help save the world. We should continue to recycle and we should probably try to reduce how much we throw out after lunch. Again recycle, reuse things like plastic bags more often, and we can try to ride our bikes more than our cars. I could limit the amount of travel I have to do in a car, recycle more often, and remember to turn off lights and other electrical devices before I leave the room.
ReplyDeletePatrick- I tink that Eart Day is a god day to raise awarness of our enviorment and how we should prevent it from becoming filled with trash and pollutants. I think we can support Earth Day by cleaning up our local community and working up from their to eventully grow world wide. I think we should go around and do simple things like pick up trash and spread the word. I think a big thing we can do at my house to help out the enviorment is turn of the lights when were not even in the room. We could also plant more trees and use solar power,and not drive our cars as much.
ReplyDeleteSydney-- I think that Earth day was a great thing to make a special occasion. Many people around the world celebrate it whether its picking up trash off the road or just simply recycling. I think that on Earth day our school should have had a field trip to help the environment. Little things that each schools do can really help. At our home, we always recycle and plastic water bottles, newspapers, and cans. We are very cautious about that. We also try as hard as we can to use reusable water bottles. I think that we could think about the water we use, because we always keep it running before we get in the shower or brush our teeth. Also sometimes I forget to turn off the lights before I go to school. I always need to remind myself that the environment is for all of us.
ReplyDeleteHayley: I really like Earth Day. I think it is a great way to show us about how we have only one Earth. We should realize that we have only one Earth. I think we should do school cleanup or plant trees in our community. We should take more time to celebrate it then the little time it gets celebrated at St. Joseph's. At hhome we can not waste water, we can make a garden. and we can also plant trees. We can plant those little trees that you get that you have to take care of. At home we have those energy saving light bulbs. We also have our own garden. I would be willing to not run the water when it is not used. I am also willing to try to help my mom in the garden.
ReplyDeleteLauryn-I think Earth Day is a great idea. I think it makes us more aware of our surroundings and thankful for what we have. I think hanging up the Earth day flag was a great idea. To help Earth day I think our school should reuse paper a lot more. I feel like we are always waiting paper at school. At home I think we should us our water bottles instead of using plastic bottles. I think we can also turn off the water when we brush our teeth. All the little things will make a huge difference.
ReplyDeleteReed- I think Eath Day is a great idea to help us keep this Earth clean. It is a simple as recyceling a water bottle and other trash and picking up trash on the green belt. Earth Day reminds us the beuty of the earth and how god made us. We should spend the whole day at school outside admiring Earth ad all of its wonders. Simple as turning of a light helps save electricety. Other times we can turn of the water when we are brushing teeth instead of keeping it runnning.
ReplyDeleteNikita- I think Earth Day is a good thing. It reminds on our commits to keep the Earth, the ONLY THING WE CAN POSSIBLY LIVE ON, healthy and pollutant free. In our community and school, and we're already pretty good at this, we can start a garden, and everyone can use it. For example, instead of shipping food for our school lunches, we could just pick fresh fruits and veggies instead. At home, we plant our own garden and reuse grocery bags for the lining to our mini garbage cans. To help even more, I could turn off the lights when I am not using them and I could take shorter showers.
ReplyDeleteMegan- Earth Day is an AWESOME idea! Since Earth is the only planet that organisms like us can live on, we should definitely need to nourish it and make sure it is ready for the next generations. On Earth Day some ways to show our gratitude to God and the earth would be to go around the neighborhood and collect trash, plant trees and gardens, and try to reduce our waste overall. Earth dat reminds us all that we need to respect our environment or sooner or later it will be gone. At home we reuse grocery bags for sack lunches and other storage. Also I recycle. I think to make the world a greener place we all need to go by the three r's: reuse, reduce, and recycle. All of these are crucial steps on making our world a healthier place.
ReplyDeleteCrucial-Vocab word!
DeletePetie-I think that Earth Day is great. It is a good time to look back on where we live and the earth that has taken care of us. There is also only one of them so we should learn to take care of it while we can. We can plant a lot of stuff in order to put as much clean air into the earth as we can. We can also clean up all the litter that is displace don the green belt or even around our school. I have been trying to walk everywhere that I can. I also try to recycle everything that I can. I am also saving clean water in my house. I would really try to bike to school every day. It would help the environment just that much more. I would also be willing to walk along the greenbelt with a trash bag and pick up all the trash.
ReplyDeleteLiza- I think that Earth Day is so amazing. It's great to have a day where everyone thinks of the Earth and what we can do to improve the quality of the Earth. I think some ways we can support Earth Day is to learn more about Earth and help it out. In school we can learn about how Earth Day came about and we can plant some trees. As a society we need to let people know about Earth Day and also plant trees around the city. At home we should support Earth by composting and planting trees in our front yards or asking to have trees put in the front of apartments. This way, we can show how much we care about the Earth and decorate naturally with nature's beauty. Things that I can do is find friends living around me and we can start a carpool. I could also try and have my friends compost or start a carpool if they don't live near me. I think that these are some pretty good ideas on how we can support the Earth, even just a little bit. I think that if enough people do things like this, we will be improve the Earth little by little.
ReplyDeleteLily- I think Earth Day is really great for everyone around the globe. It's a good way to have people stop and actually think about what they are doing to the Earth. One way that we can contribute to help Earth Day is to take time out of our day and plant a tree or even simply start to recycle. One thing that I do to help the earth is by carpooling with friends to go places. Simple things like carpooling will help out alot to the earth. The earth already has enough problems and cars that have poluted it. Maybe what our class could do is annualy go out and plant trees to help the environment.
ReplyDeleteNate- I think Earth Day is great. We already hung up a flag and talked about Earth Day in Health Class in support of Earth Day, but I suppose we could get involved in the community and Earth Day more by rounding up some people and planting some plants and trees. At home, well, we could tell our parents about it, and plant trees and gardens, etc. To support "Green living" more at home, I could recycle more.
ReplyDeleteNatalie- I think Earth Day should really be every day, instead of just one day per year. We could print double-sided paper at school, instead of one-sided, to try and save paper. We could also plant trees around town. I try to make sure to turn off all the lights when I leave the house. I also make sure to turn off the water while I'm brushing my teeth, and when we go the the store, we use fabric reusable bags that some stores offer. Once you buy a couple, you don't have to use plastic or paper bags. Also, our whole family has glass waterbottles that we wash and reuse, so that we don't have to use the plastic ones a lot. I would definitely be willing to take shorter showers, and recycle more.
ReplyDeleteNathaniel- Earth Day was a smart idea because we often forget that the Earth itself is very important. If we didn’t have the Earth, we wouldn’t be… alive. We need a small reminder to help recycle and reuse once in a while. I think it’s also pretty amazing the Earth Day website has more than 1 billion “green” pledges. That me around 1/7 of the population (14%) of the world’s population has pledged to do something good for the environment. But we still need to do much more. We could have a lemonade stand type of thing and the money raised could be used for planting trees in a park. This way we help the environment and kids can learn firsthand how to take care of the environment. When it is a bright day at school, we can have all lights off to conserve energy. At home I never brush while water is running, I recycle everything that has the “recycle” symbol on it (used papers too), and I turn off the lights whenever I leave a room or someone else does. I would be willing to try and raise awareness on how plastic bottles should not be used in abundance. They should only be used by countries that REALLY actually might need them. If all the people in the U.S. and Europe reused their bottles of water and no one used plastic bottles, the amount of plastic would be a lot less. If all of that water was sent to a country where water was scarce, think of how many lives could be saved… We waste all of our water, and there are countries where clean water is an impossible sight. Let’s all try to “go green” and some of the clean water left on Earth. This water may end up saving another persons life.
ReplyDeleteclaire-helping our planet is not hard.If everybody recycled and turned off the water while bruching their teeth then we wouldnt have the problems with our planet that we do today.At home my family recycles by using old papers like old homework work sheets to write notes on.People can wach out little containers to recycle thats somthing we also do at my house.My family dosnt usally buy the plastic water bottles that you recycle and most of the time end up litterd ,instead we buy water bottles that you can keep and reuse wich also saves more money.There are programs that we can do to help the planet such as the river sweep.
ReplyDeleteAdriana: I think earth day is a great way to help save our environment. some additional ways we can help Earth Day is instead of driving to school maybe walk or bike to school. or if you have some paper scraps you need ot throw away you can recycle them instead of throwing them away. SOme things my family does at home is when we go grocery shopping we bring our own bag to put the grocerys in. Or me, my sister and brother walk to my moms office instead of having her come and pick us up because its not far away. there was a program that i did with my friend once just for fun. the program was the river sweep.
ReplyDeleteJustin- I think that earth day is great for our environment. On earth day we can recycle more and be more conscious about what we are doing to our world. At home we can do small things like conserve water when we are showering that will make a big difference in the end. We could so things in our community like picking up trash and cleaning up the earth.
ReplyDeleteSean - I think of earth day as what happens when idiot force their propaganda on others, yes earth day is a good idea, but seriously, the earth is huge! It is big enough to be flat in almost any radius, and has its own gravitational pull, there are large amounts of forests and plants, which do give us oxygen. That should at least say something. We can support earth day by not fearing the earth's destruction, but accepting its' current beauty. I support earth day at home, preferably McCall by embracing nature and its' beautiful complicity when I am out in the wilderness and praries, just taking in everything. No, since it would contradict my first statement.
ReplyDeleteIsabel- Earth day, is a day meant to bring awareness of our environment. I think it has served its purpose. In the past, I think people were more fired up and excited about it. While recently, I think fewer people put that much thought into the holiday. I think Earth day still has been an important day. Because of it firing us up in the past, today we recycle on a regular basis. I think there are lots of things we can do at school and our communities to help the environment, such as picking up trash, planting trees, and more. At home we can all try to recycle and reuse things before we recycle too.
ReplyDeleteKeelie: I love Earth Day. It reminds me to care for the environment. But, I do everyday. Earth Day is when I can shove it in my family's face to treat the earth better. I think our school should have an Earth Day celebration somehow. Like go outside and play for an hour. Boise should have a parade or festival-thing. I'd skip school for that. At our house we take short showers. We also reuse plastic bags. Sometimes my sisters and I ride bikes to softball games or practices. We recycle a lot. We have a trash can for recycling. I keep trying to get my parents to buy electric cars or get solar panels. They just shrug it off. I'm not done with those ideas yet. We probably could use paper better. There's dozens on the computer room floor.
ReplyDeleteAndoni-I think earth day is a step in the right direction for our environment. It brings an awareness about how our day to day decisions could affect the environment.We can do OUR PART IN RAISING AWARENESS ON THIS ISSUE. WE CAN DO LITTLE THINGS LIKE DECIDING TO RECYCLE SOMETHING AS OPPOSED TO THROWING IT IN THE TRASH. At my house we try to recycle more than we throw away. We can save water, and make better decisions with what we do with it. We should all try to make our world a better and healthier place for the next generation.
ReplyDeleteLiam~ I think that Earth Day is a great day to celebrate. I think that we should all take part in it by raising awareness of the Earth and protecting it. I think that the best way we can support Earth is by spreading awareness that Earth needs our help to keep it safe. At my house we recycle as much as we can. We do not use Styrofoam and we wash dishes instead of using disposable plates. I would be willing to not take long showers, and be more careful of how I use the water at my house. I think that we can all benefit from Earth day and, I think that Earth day is another day to remember that we need to care for the Earth, for it is not ours to own and take care of. The Earth will be here for future generations and we need to leave Earth as good as this generation left it.
ReplyDeleteRylie: I think that Earth Day is one of the best holidays(next to Independence Day). A day to be thankful for what the Earth has given us and to give back is wonderful. I think that we should make it a week though because, then we could really get into it. Organizing different group gatherings to plant and clean-up. We can support Earth Day by accually taking action and not just learn about it in school. We should go outside for a little and really see the world. We should plant trees and pick-up trash. Yes, I know that that is easier said then done. If you cant go outside, then try to recycle those old papers instead if tossing them in the trash. The things that I do at home are, sometimes my mom and I will take our trash and sort through it, just so we can make sure we didn't throw anything recyclable out. Other times my sister and I bike down to our softball fields instead of taking the car. I thought it would be really boring and a waste of time, but I ended up liking it and went up and down the hills three or four times that day. I would be willing to give-up a day with-out riding in a car once a week. It would be fun, to ride down to school and back. Riding with my sisters is also enjoying and we could catch up on our day.
ReplyDeleteRaquel- Well for me Earth day is pretty important. I kind of look at it as a day we can give back to the Earth for doing so much for us. I mean it deserves something because without the Earth we wouldn't have a place where we can roam. Some ideas at school is to hence more on recycling in the cafeteria because we do a great job but we do a great job in our classrooms. If we reminded kids to recycle at lunch then it would become a habit and then we could also be doing great in the cafeteria. At home my family and I recycle everything that is recyclable. We also don't take baths instead we take showers. I think I could be more concerned about plastics and instead reuse water bottles and such.
ReplyDeleteWhat are things you do at home? Are there any additional activities you would be willing to commit to at home to support “green” living? Tomas - Earth day is a wonderful day of celebration and making the earth a bit more green. We can help the earth by recycling more and reusing plastic materials. In stead of throwing them away, we should put it in the washing bucket. Another way is that we can eat more of our food at lunch. At our house we reuse things a lot more an earth day and we clean up the yard a bit. maybe if we did this everyday except in a bigger way like cleaning parks we should be able to make the earth a bit more green.
ReplyDeleteWes- Earth Day is probably one of the greastest ways that people all around the world can celebrate an awareness day to see how we can help our environment. I mean the world might end in like a billion years from now due to the expansion of the sun but we don't want it to end due to global warming. We must help the future generation not have to deal it the trash that we are making now. Some additoinal ways we can help Earth is that help with killing weeds because of how they kill plants and we need plants to survive against crowding of deadly CO2. At my house we always recycle and clean up in places near us. I would also be willing to join a group that picks up trash near the parks.
ReplyDeleteI think earth day is a great way to get the word out that you need to take care of our environment. We can't force people to keep the world clean, but we can educate people so that they will become more aware of the environment. At home, we can make sure to recycle. I would be willing to plant plants in my backyard.
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DeleteJohn-I think Earth Day is a great day that tells the world to use the three r's reduce, reuse, and, recycle to make our world a better place. Maybe we can go around the city of Boise picking up trash and throwing or recycling to make the city more cleaner or we could ride our bikes to school if we are close enough to reduce the gas use. We could also reuse our water bottles and other cans to prevent throwing so much garbage that is actually useful. Our whole world should be aware of what they do to our planet so that we can make it better, wether it is taking short showers and not keeping the water running while you are brushing your teeth or taking time to pick trash along the highway it donsn't matter it is one little thing. At my house we reduse, reuse, and recycle because we want to make our world a better place. Yes, their are additional ways that I can help the world go gree and that is what I have been saying this whole time using the three r's and branching off those with activities that helps our enviroment and also our community!
ReplyDeleteBailie- I think Earth Day is wonderful because it raises awareness about going green instead of being wasteful. Some additional ways I think we can support Earth Day are riding our bikes to school if you aren't too far away. You also can just car pool as to save gas and prevent more pollution going into the air. Also, you sometimes see people bringing reusable shopping bags when at the grocery store. I think that is a great idea and believe more people should do the same. At home, people could take shorter showers/baths and can turn off the water when brushing their teeth. The things people can do to save the planet are endless and I am willing to do some of these things.
ReplyDeleteTodd-I feel that Earth day is a great; it is great because it is just one of the many ways to help the environment. We could recycle more and reuse plastic bags after just one day of us. At home we recycle everything we can and we have a compost to help our garden grow better. I like to think its just a small way I can help save the environment. You could also talk shorter showers or in instead of using your dryer put your wet clothes outside to dry and save electricity.
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