Earth Day! 10 fun and easy things you can do with your military kid to celebrate our planet!

[00:00:00] Hello, hello and welcome back to the show. This episode is coming out on Monday, April 17th, and Saturday April 22nd is Earth Day, in case you didn't know it. And so I know that this is, I'm military spouse podcast. This is the month of military child. But , The earth and taking care of our planet and trying to undo some of the damage that we have already done is something that is very, , near and dear to my heart.

[00:00:35] So I wanted to dedicate today's show, two Earth Day. It's gonna be short and sweet. Uh, I have my top 10 things that you can do with your family to celebrate Earth Day this year, because I feel like that's a. Okay, great. It's Earth Day. Fantastic. W what am I supposed to do? Like I, what am I supposed to do?

[00:00:59] How do I get involved? I'm gonna help you with that. That's what today's show is all about. , this is one of the things that I, I feel like is, is important. To have conversations with your children about, about our planet, you know, about, , how can we take care of our planet?

[00:01:17] Yeah. Look at all of this. I know. Isn't that saddle? All of these trees are being cut down and, you know, trees, that's where we get our oxygen from. Oxygen's important for us, right? And the trees take , carbon dioxide out of the air, which. Not good for us, right? 

[00:01:32] We need to support these things, and we need to take care of the animals that are on our planet. , you can see images, or even when you just go yourself to the lake or to the ocean, you see trash. This is not good for our, it's not good for the animals that live in the ocean.

[00:01:46] It's not good for our planet. And just having those conversations with our kids because they're our future. They're our future. So they need to be aware of these things and what can they do? Right. Because they are, man, they are little activists for sure. If you give them, if you give 'em that message and you give 'em that, um, example, which we, do in our house because it's, it's important.

[00:02:12] Okay, so Earth Day, just a little kind of behind the scenes here, and this is again, something that you can talk about with your kids. Why? Why do we celebrate Earth Day? And the reason why we celebrate Earth Day is because back in. The, well, the first Earth Day was held on April 22nd, 1970, and it's on April 22nd every year.

[00:02:32] And this year that happens to be a Saturday, which is great because you don't have to work, the kids don't have to go to school. So it gives you the opportunity to participate in some activities, perhaps , where you are. , so the first one was April 22nd, 1970. And it came about because 1969 was a pretty rough year for the, environment.

[00:02:51] There was, , the Chia HOA river, which is, , , is part of Lake Erie caught on fire and it caught on fire because of all the chemicals and crap and oil that has just been dumped and leached into that area. And people were like, whoa, whoa. What's going on? Because for so long we're just like, oh, it's okay.

[00:03:12] It's fine. See, nothing's wrong, but now here we are 50 years later and it's like, oh yeah, that's really, that's really not good. We've done some damage. We've done some damage for sure. So there was, there was that the huge chemical fire on a lake. And then we started noticing that the bald eagles were declining rapidly and realized later that it was because of the chemical d d t.

[00:03:37] Right. That was making their. Very, very, very fragile and brittle. And so they weren't reproducing. So there was that, and then there was a , oil rig that leaked millions of gallons of oil off the coast of Santa Barbara. So there was kind of all of these things happening and people were like, holy cow.

[00:03:55] Like this is what's going on. And there was this big public outcry. And then Gaylor Nelson, who was the founder of Earth Day, he was a, the governor of Wisconsin, and then he was a senator. And he decided, you know what, let's have a, a quote unquote teachin where we can talk about environmental issues and what can we do.

[00:04:14] And so that happened on April 22nd, 1970. And it was, it was huge. So, I mean, you know, 1970. 2000 colleges and universities participated. 10,000 public schools, 20 million citizen. I mean, it was like 10% of the US population at the time participated. And so it just was kind of this grassroots effort that got going.

[00:04:36] And then it also led to the establishment of noaa, which is the National Oceanic and Atmo. Administration and also the EPA Environmental Protection Agency. Those were, , both established in October of 1970. So it's, you know, it's been, it's been around for a while. We recognize it's a problem. So what can we do?

[00:05:01] One of the things that you can do is you can log on to earth day.org. Pretty easy to remember. I'll also link it in the show notes, and they have, you can click on the events. And they have, I mean, just a whole author, author of information and events and things that are happening near you and, and they're literally all over the world.

[00:05:19] Like they're all over the planet. There are events that are happening on Earth Day. You can search the map by zip code. And then there's also a little, , a tab called Take Action Now. And that can give you like, cuz it's like, okay, so what am I supposed to do? This is what you can do. Go to earth day.org.

[00:05:35] Find the take a, use that take action tab. What can you find something on? That you, that speaks to you or that fits into your schedule or your life, or that you're willing to do. Cause that's a big thing too. Okay. So there's a lot of stuff that you can do. I'm gonna give you my top 10, my top 10 things, and they're all family friendly.

[00:05:53] . , we always celebrate Earth Day as a family. My top three that we do for our family is we plant something. So I like to go to a local nursery, so not Home Depot or Lowe's or the mass quantity facilities, right? I like to go to a local nursery, pick out some flowers or plants.

[00:06:14] If you're renting, you're living on base, you know you can get containers and make some nice little flower boxes for your deck or your garage. Plant something in your yard if you have the space and the place to plant a tree. We were gonna put trees in our backyard anyway, , cuz our backyard was not landscaped.

[00:06:30] We moved into our house. , so that just worked out that we planted two trees last year. So if you have the opportunity in the space to plant some trees, do that. The other thing that we like to do as a family is go on a walk or a hike. We walk all the time. I've got dogs. I share it on my Instagram all the time.

[00:06:46] I'm, I'm in a phase right now where, , I've committed to taking a 30 minute walk. Every single day, rain or shine, no matter what. I have walked when it's 15 degrees outside and I've got a beanie and I call it my blanket jacket, it comes down to mid shin. It's so warm though. And so that's part of our daily life anyways, walking.

[00:07:09] So what we'll do is we'll just grab your garden gloves or some, you know, latex gloves or, or. Something to think you're not actually touching the trash. We'll take a trash bag with us and we'll just pick up trash we find along the way. Or if there's a park that you really like to go to, or you know, maybe a section of road that you see every time you drive to school.

[00:07:27] Like just go and get a bag and go pick trash up. Like that's a very easy thing that you can do. And honestly, every little bit helps. Another thing that we like to do, uh, and this is kind of new for, for this year, so our big ones are planting something and picking up trash. Those are, those are the two that we really do in our family.

[00:07:46] And the third one for this year is go visit a state park. Are there any state parks that are, that are near you? , this year for Christmas? I'll have to share, I'll have to share a picture of it on my Instagram so you guys can see. Oh, I love Etsy. I, I like to think that I'm artistic, but I really don't have the skills to back that up, so I really like to just buy beautiful things that other people have made.

[00:08:14] That's kind of my jam. So I love Etsy because it's small businesses. I like to support small businesses, and, , I found this really cool. , it's like a wall hanging kind of thing, but it's like, I don't know, like two feet by like one foot. And it's almost like a scroll. It's got a piece of wood at the top and it's got canvas in the middle and printed, like screen printed on it.

[00:08:32] It's like Colorado. And they hit a couple of different things you could pick and it's all of the state parks in Colorado with a little circle next to it so you can color in the circle when you visited that state park. And I thought, man, that's really cool, especially for us as a military. Because, you know, we've talked about this before.

[00:08:48] One of my coping mechanisms, one of our family co coping mechanisms when we're moving and PCSing to a new place, is starting that next duty station bucket list. What do we have to look forward to when we get there? And then being very mindful about our time at our new duty station so we get as much in as we possibly can while we're there, enjoy the area that we're in as much as possible.

[00:09:11] So I bought this state park map and , we've slowly bit, luckily there. Ton right near where we are so we don't have to go very far. , so I don't know if that's gonna, would be the same case for, for where you are. Okay. , that is, , something that we're, we're slowly checking off. So I think if the weather is good here, cuz you never know what the weather's, we might have snow on April 22nd.

[00:09:35] It's hard to say, uh, here in Colorado. So I'll have to wait and see. But maybe we can go visit the state park. And then this was something, and I will, again, I'll link this in the show notes, but, , the Smithsonian, you, , is it through the Smith? I can't remember. Okay. Don't quote me on this. I can't remember If it's the Smithsonian, I will fi again.

[00:09:51] I will link it in the show notes. But you can virtually visit national parks. So if you are near a national park, that's something that you could do. You could visit them virtually. , so I will link, again, link that in the show notes. So those are the big three for our families. And then here's some other ideas.

[00:10:07] Okay. So you can. Again, log on to earth day.org and find a cleanup event near you. That's huge. There's so much trash and stuff just everywhere and it just, it makes me so sad. And there's a ton of events that happen again all over the world. And so find one of those near you if you can participate in that.

[00:10:28] Fantastic. If you can't participate in that, Do something locally through your neighborhood, a park that you like to go to, a hike you like to do whatever. Another idea is to hang bird seeded ornaments. So these are like, like old school. We're going old school. Get yourself a pine cone. Cover it with peanut butter, dip it in, bird seeded, hanging on a tree.

[00:10:48] It's cheap. It's fun. , I think I'm, the girls and I are gonna do that. This, I don't know. I'm sure Michael will join us for some of it, but these are all, usually Michael and I, or I'm sorry, the girls. That do this stuff. , so, , you can make bird scene ornaments and hang those out. Again, not expensive, so that's something that you could easily do with your kids, a fun activity for your kids.

[00:11:08] , and then if you don't already, here's another idea. , maybe I should count them out. Okay, so that's one five. We're on number six. Okay. Number six, if you don't already, You need to have reusable bags for the store. You need to have, like, get some canvas bags or whatever. They're, it's slowly, if it hasn't happened in your state yet, doing away with plastic bag, not doing away with plastic bags.

[00:11:32] But they're starting to charge for them, which is making people not wanna use them, which I think is a good thing because the amount of plastics is pretty sad. I have a statistic under the, , for the next one. , reusable bags. Put them in your car. That's a big one. Put them in your car.

[00:11:52] So then when you are at the store, it's not like, oh, crud, I forgot my thing. Our bags stay in the car all the time. So then they're always there when we need them at the store. So reusable, uh, reasonable bags. And then, so this is number eight again, if not already. Get a refillable water bottle. I really hope that most of us are not buying plastic water bottles every year.

[00:12:13] But here's some stats for you on this one. So approximately only 9%, nine 9% of all plastic gets recycled. That means that 91% of plastic ends up in our landfills or in our oceans. That is. Pretty staggering. And in the US alone, we go through 50 billion with a bee plastic bottles per year. That's so crazy.

[00:12:45] And a hundred million plastic water bottles per day. A hundred million water bottles per day. That's so crazy. And it takes 400 years for plastic water bottles to biodegrade 400 years that, that's not good. That's not good. So refillable water bottle, get yourself one. There's lots of really, , super cute ones and very, very, very easy to.

[00:13:11] Okay, number eight. , if you, again, if you don't already, for the love of God, you need to be recycling it, it boggles my mind. And you know, where I notice it the most is when we're traveling. So when we PCs, so when we pcsd from Washington to Colorado. There's no rec, there was no recycling in what were the big city.

[00:13:35] We went through Idaho. I don't feel like there was good recycling there, like as you're tr and then like we, we drove, not this year, we did it last year. We road tripped from Colorado to Maryland for Christmas to see our family. And there's like no recycle, there's no recycling at the hotels. There's no re And I'm like, what in the world?

[00:13:55] Like, what, what is happening? I'm not throwing my plastic bottle away. Like I can't like it. I've been recycling for so long. It just is like, it's like against nature. To put your plastic, you wall one. It would be great to not have bought the plastic in the first place. I get it. But when you're traveling, sometimes it's not always help helped.

[00:14:14] Um, but I wanna be able to recycle it. So if you don't recycle, if you don't have that set up in your house yet, make that happen. You need to make that happen. Okay? Number nine, change out your light bulbs to long lasting light bulbs to, so get away from the incandescent and the fluorescent ones, and you need to get.

[00:14:34] L e d. Oh my gosh. We, you need to switch over to l e d light bulbs and they. A little bit more expensive, but they last a lot longer and they are so much more energy efficient. So the energy efficiency helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which is the ozone, the whole thing. Yes. And also along with that, Turn your lights off when you are not in the room.

[00:15:00] And that is so hard for kids. Homeward, there's like, like the house is lit up like Christmas. If you're not upstairs, if you're not in the room, turn off the light, you're not in the bathroom. Turn off the light. So turn off the lights. So l e d light bulbs, turn off the lights. And then the last. Is eat more local food, eat more local food.

[00:15:20] If you can shop at a farmer's market, I know it's the winter still, so the farmer's market here for us doesn't open until like mid-May, but that's something. Add that to your schedule, right? Use the farmer's market. Buy locally as much as you possibly can. And, support the local farmers. And then also, you know, you're reducing emissions that way as well.

[00:15:41] If your food doesn't have to be trucked in from all over the, all over the country, , is a great thing. So that's it. Those are my top 10 lots of, , super fun ones. I am also linking, I found three separate websites, , that I'm gonna link in the show notes that have , Ridiculous, like 30 on each one.

[00:16:01] Activities that you can do with your kids, art projects that you can do with your kids. Just all of these different ideas. Build a bug motel and have a seed. I mean, so many ideas. And again, this episode is coming out on Monday, the 17th. You have all week to get something. Just pick one or two.

[00:16:21] It doesn't have to be anything crazy. Pick one or two things. Plant something and go for a walk and pick up trash. Like it can be as easy as that. It doesn't have to be crazy. If you wanna go a little bit above and beyond and you wanna do some stuff with your kids and really get them involved, there's a, there are so many ideas that I, again, linking.

[00:16:38] There's three different ones that I found that had lots of different ideas on each one. , so you can check those out. And that's it. Short and sweet today. I will talk to you again next week. Take care.