Celebrating Earth Day 2021
This year, we celebrate one of the biggest Earth Days to date, officially expanding across three days, with events, celebrations, and activations worldwide.
If there is any day of the year that should be celebrated every day, it’s Earth Day. Every year on April 22, people, governments, and institutions around the world celebrate in unison our love for the planet. It takes a lot to bring so many people together, but what better cause is there than honoring our home planet that sustains all life? There are countless ways we can participate in Earth Day, but here are three easy options to get started:
Participate in a beach cleanup
Our oceans are one of the richest and extensive ecosystems on our planet. Sadly, they are also one of the most threatened. The effects of climate change combined with reckless human activity have damaged our marine life more than we can imagine. Thankfully, we can help be part of the solution.
Many of the pollutants that contaminate our waters are man-made. Plastic, pieces of fabric, and insoluble material like styrofoam, travel from our land to our sea every day. They accumulate in the water and can be life-threatening to our sea friends. Participation in a local beach clean-up can help clear up the trash that swims in our waters and builds upon our coasts. Picking up trash along your beach helps protect wildlife from coming into contact with it. It also helps keep harmful toxins out of our waters and our beaches clean and safe.
“Eight million metric tons: That’s how much plastic we dump into the oceans each year. That’s about 17.6 billion pounds — or the equivalent of nearly 57,000 blue whales — every single year. By 2050, ocean plastic will outweigh all of the ocean’s fish.” — NRDC
Local beach cleanups in Miami include www.cleanmiamibeach.org and www.debrisfreeoceans.org. Sign up to join a team of volunteers during their designated times, or organize a cleanup of your own with friends and family!
If you don’t live near a beach you can still participate in keeping our environment clean. Organize or attend cleanup at your local park, trail, river, or field.
Spring Cleaning? How to clean out your closet.
If working outdoors is not an option for you (hello Miami summer heat!), there are other ways to celebrate Earth Day. Doing a wardrobe cleanout is something we all tend to do during our Spring cleanings. However, when doing a deep cleaning to become clutter-free, there are ways to do it while being environmentally conscious.
Make sure the clothes you choose to part ways with, continues to live on and doesn’t become waste. Instead of throwing a garment into the trash (where it’ll continue to fill up our overcrowded landfills), donate it to a clothing center or trade with a friend. Thrifting or swapping clothes can help you keep fabric pollutants out of our environment, and give you an updated wardrobe at the same time!
“The fashion industry produces 20 per cent of global wastewater and 10 per cent of global carbon emissions — more than all international flights and maritime shipping.” — UNEP
If an item of clothing is too worn or damaged to donate or reuse, there are also recycling centers that will transform that into a brand new piece. Instead of ending in a landfill, your clothes will continue to live on and feed a circular economy cycle instead of a toxic one.
Go Solar!
It may seem the most ambitious choice from the list, but going solar might be easier than you think. Taking charge of our energy production can have amazing benefits for the planet, and you can do it faster than it’ll take to sort through all your clothes!
New solar programs like our Savings Sharing Plan (SSP) make it easy, accessible, and financially possible for most homeowners to go solar.
It’s our sole mission to get more people to switch to clean energy.
Our dream is to see everyone benefit from the sun and their home’s roof. Friends, family, even your neighbors…each empty roof hurts our planet and we want to change this.
SSP lets everyone in South Florida go solar with no investment, loans, or liabilities. Basically, we install a free solar roof, the homeowner’s energy bill drops, and we share the savings. Simple. And we provide an awesome energy Dashboard for real-time energy insights! For the first time, there is no reason for a homeowner not to switch to green energy.
How can you help the clean energy movement? Share sprightful.com/start with any homeowner you know in South Florida and we’ll take care of the rest!
Can you imagine being a catalyst for so many people to switch to clean energy so easily?
Wrap Up
Maybe it’s because we saw the world change so much in 2020 or because after a year of quarantining in our homes we have grown fonder of our natural environment, but Earth Day 2021 definitely feels bigger and brighter than before. If there is anything to learn from the past year, it’s that our world can change in the blink of an eye. Let’s help make the change a positive one. With each of us doing our part, no matter how small, we can help protect our planet.
For more information on Earth Day, how you can participate, or how you can celebrate it all year round, visit the official page of the Earth Day Organization.
Solar should be simple. ☀️ At Sprightful, our mission is to give everyone access to the magic of solar energy. ✨ After hundreds of solar installations and thousands of conversations with homeowners looking into solar energy, we’ve figured out a way to put an entire solar system on people’s homes for free and resolved all their hesitations for homeowners to make the switch to solar in the first place. 🙋🏼♀️
It’s called the Savings Sharing Plan (SSP) 🌱 Go green, gain savings immediately, and be headache-free. 👏🏼💚 Learn more sprightful.com
