4 Ways to Observe Earth Day
How should we live in the end? We should all return to nature. The most important thing is how closely we can live in and with nature. That kind of life is needed in the religious world ... After returning to nature, if you can fit right into any situation there, the boundaries of the natural environment you can experience in heaven will be so much wider. (True Father, “Let Us Return to Nature,” 2001)
How do you plan to celebrate this Earth Day? While there are many ways to honor the planet during the April 22 holiday, here are a few fun and effective ways to make a difference this year.
Organize a Cleanup
Whether participating in a cleanup project at the Belvedere property during Spring Fest, or joining a tree-planting service project with the Shine City Project in Las Vegas, there’s no shortage of opportunities to tend to nature this Earth Day. Though we can’t clean up the entire planet in a day, we can beautify a pocket of our own neighborhood. Picking up trash at a local park, beach, or along a popular hiking trail is a great way to spend time with family and friends while observing the holiday. It’s also a good chance to give back to the community and show younger people the importance of caring for nature.
Composting
Earth Day is a great time to start cutting down on how much food we throw out by taking up composting. Composting promotes a circular food system that transforms scraps (and other organic materials, like paper towels) into regenerative and healthy soil. Making a compost pile in the yard or an outdoor/indoor bin can be done in a few easy steps. There may be a compost drop-off point for certain food scraps at a local community garden or farmer’s market as well. Since food waste makes up a large portion of residential garbage, adopting a composting routine will help reduce the waste stream, cut methane emissions from landfills, conserve water, and improve soil health and lessen erosion.
Visit a National Park or Monument
A trip to a national park or monument on Earth Day does more than just reconnect us with nature, it also supports our precious federal lands and waters — natural systems that are central to America’s diverse cultures and natural beauty, vital to wildlife, and key to mitigating the impacts of pollution. By spending Earth Day hiking in a national park, we are publicly showing the value of these beautiful places, as well as investing in its preservation for the next generation of nature lovers through any visitor’s fee.
Learn Something New
There is always something new to be learned, and Earth Day is a prime opportunity to expand our knowledge about nature and our role as stewards of the environment. Whether reading True Parents’ words on nature, or navigating articles from The Earth and I, an online environmental publication by the Hyo Jeong International Foundation for the Unity of the Sciences (HJIFUS), we can further educate ourselves on the sacred relationship between human beings and the environment.
Celebrate Earth Day and connect with a Unificationist community near you here.