April 21, 2009

Earth Day!

In honor of tomorrow (Wednesday) being Earth Day, I thought it would be appropriate to give a little history on Earth Day.

The idea of Earth Day was a seven year long process, that began back in 1962 through the campaigning of Senator Gaylord Nelson. He was disturbed that the state of the enviroment was an non-issue and he convinced President Kennedy to go on a national conservation tour to bring awareness to the issue. The first Earth Day was implemented on April 22, 1970 and was a huge succes due to the grassroot initative that was taken by the country. There was 20 million demonstrators and thousands of schools and local communities that participated.

What can you do?

- Inform your children/students on the importance of taking care of the environment.


- Conserve Energy

  • turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room
  • use a programmable thermostat to save on heating and cooling costs when you are not home
  • replace incandescent light bulbs with ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). If every household in the U.S. replaced one light bulb with a CFL, it would prevent enough pollution to equal removing one million cars from the road.

- Use less water

  • Wash only full loads of laundry
  • Take short showers instead of taking a bath
  • Water lawn or garden during the coolest part of the day. Keeps the water from evaporating

- Reduce/Reuse/Recycle

- Here is a link from the US Government that gives more ways you can create a healthier environment: http://www.earthday.gov/

- Here is another link from the US Environmental Protection Agency, that gives ways to reduce your environmental impact on your everyday activities: http://www.epa.gov/epahome/home.htm

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