Earth Day! It’s almost here! April 22nd marks a day that makes me very happy. Millions of people around the world pause to think about something bigger. Something that brings us all together, no matter what tiny corner of the world we call home.
I think I would be remiss not to point out that one day a year (or even a month: Earth Month) is not nearly enough to focus on the planet. But you already know that. ;-). So let’s get into some things you can do today!
Simple idea: try one of these five ideas!
I know that you move as quickly as I do. And it’s hard to take action on something for Earth Day when you have a to do list that’s a mile long. I’ve pulled together a list of 5 ideas that you can plan quickly (literally 10 minutes or less research) to celebrate Earth Day this year.
Let me know if you try any of these. I would LOVE to know if this is useful for you.
..xx Brandy
1. PICK ONE SPECIES TO HELP THIS YEAR:
Pick one animal or plant species to learn more about. In a 3 minute read, we can learn interesting facts, understand why they need our help, and get a handful of ideas we can do to help. Then we can do something right then, or list them out on our calendar to do periodically, like once a month, throughout the year. This is a great activity to do with kids each year.
2. TRY IMPLEMENTING A NEW (EASY) DAILY HABIT:
Download the Free Everyday Sustainability Guide from The Nature Conservancy. This is a well written article on little things we can do to make a difference. Pick something and try implementing it as a new daily habit.
https://support.nature.org/site/SPageNavigator/supporter/green_guide.html
3. LOOK FOR A FESTIVAL NEAR YOU:
Are you free on the big day (or weekend leading up to or after it)? If so, consider joining your community for something fun. I love this roundup of activities all over. If your city isn’t listed here, I recommend looking for events on Facebook near you.
https://www.everfest.com/lists/seasonal-earth-day
In 2021, covid has things a little crazy, so here are some backup options:
4. FOR KIDS! DOWNLOAD AN ACTIVITY TO DO TOGETHER:
I love this page. Pick one of over 100 printable resources to share something that interests you with your kids. Everything from recycling, to gardening, to weather.
5. TAKE A HIKE - LITERALLY!
Get outside! If you have grass, take off your shoes! Same goes for sand, or dirt, or anything you feel comfortable digging those tootsies into. ;-) Enjoy a walking meditation through your neighborhood, or any undeveloped “still filled with nature” place near you. If you’re like me, it’s easy to plan to do this, but then remove it from the list when things get busy. Promise yourself an Earth Day walk and let me know how it goes. If you’d like to enjoy a guided nature meditation while you’re out, try one of the previously taped meditations on our YouTube channel. If you’re looking for a new spot, try the All Trails App:
WATCH THE EPISODE:
Podcast Transcript:
This episode was transcribed with ai technology from otter.ai. Please excuse any typos or incorrect language.
Brandy Montague 0:00
Welcome to episode number 39 of the For Animals For Earth podcast: five things to do for Earth Day that will take you less than 10 minutes to plan.
Brandy Montague 0:12
Hi there, this is Brandy and you’re listening to the For Animals For Earth podcast. This is a space where we inspire each other, to take small steps every day to live a more conscious life, helping the animals and the planet, while we do it. I’m so glad that you’re here, let’s all take a deep breath, and let’s get started.
Brandy Montague 0:38
Before we dive in, I quickly want to remind you of our charity of the month, The Humane League Japan. You can jump in and support them by liking them on Facebook or Instagram at @HumaneLeagueJapan, or checking out their website, thehumaneleague.org
Brandy Montague 0:53
So, Earth Day! Oh my gosh. We’re almost here, April 22. So that is Thursday of next week. I’m curious if you are excited about it and if you’ve thought about doing anything special. I have to say that, I guess stating the obvious, but Earth Day, I feel like one day a year is obviously not anywhere near enough. And I know we have earth month, which we’re in, which also isn’t anywhere near enough. So I know that you already know that if you’re here listening to this, or watching this, but I just feel remiss to not say that, that we really need to be doing something every day. So these ideas that I’m sharing are something to do special around Earth Day just to mark it, but I hope that these are things that could really be realistic, you know, every day.
Brandy Montague 1:57
So I wanted to start off by telling you that there are going to be a lot of links brought up in today’s episode. So, you can find all of those at ForAnimalsForEarth.com/podcast/39.
Brandy Montague 2:12
And I also wanted to celebrate something fun with you guys. I don’t actually know if this really means anything but it’s fun. We have ranked on some charts in other countries for Apple podcasts! We are actually number 57 right now in New Zealand, so yay. Thank you to anybody who’s listening from New Zealand. I think, I don’t know, it just makes me really excited. We need to celebrate the small wins right? We’re number 113 in Costa Rica. We were towards the top, 197 in Jamaica, and we showed up in Great Britain South Africa and Australia. So, anyways, shout out to all of you who are listening from there. Thank you so much for your support and that’s just a fun little thing that we can all celebrate together.
Brandy Montague 3:01
So, um, five things that you can do, and these are easy they’ll take less than 10 minutes.
Brandy Montague 3:10
Yeah, let’s dive in. Okay so number one is to pick one species to support throughout this year. So I think the reality is there are many many endangered species of animals that we could help and we all want to help, but this is just an idea to narrow yourself down to one, to really learn about that species and really learn about some amazing ways to help and really focus in on that. I like the idea of a year but of course you could do it for a quarter or whatever. I’m going to be doing this one with my kids. I’m not sure why it never occurred to me to do this with my kids before, but I think that I’m going to let them pick an animal, and it’ll be a really great way for them to you know learn about that animal and really learn enough that it will stick with them, you know, for the rest of their lives. So, World Wildlife Fund has a great resource for looking up species so there’s a link to that in the show notes.
Brandy Montague 4:17
Number two is to implement a new daily habit. So if you listen to episode number 37. So two episodes ago I was talking about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and an app that I really like which is called A World. You can find it in the show notes for that episode which would be ForAnimalsForEarth.com/podcast/37. But that app is an app that you can put on your phone and it’ll trigger you to do something every day, which I just think it’s such a great app. It’s really cool. So, that is a way to develop a daily habit. Another resource that I really love is put out by nature.org and it’s called the every day sustainability guide. And it is something that you can download for free, and it’s just really good and it gives you, it’s a very approachable guide to pick something that you can kind of start as a new daily habit. And then once that is very much a part of your life, then you can pick another one, but one at a time, is what I found works for me. If I try to do more than one thing at a time I just get overwhelmed, and I don’t end up doing any of them, so that was number two.
Brandy Montague 5:29
Number three is to look for an Earth Day festival. So you know last year, things were kind of on lockdown and we didn’t really get a chance to get together to celebrate Earth Day, but this year it looks like things are happening again. There’s a website called everfest.com that specifically calls out Earth Day events so maybe you can find one, you know in your community or near where you live, there’s a link to that also in the show notes.
Brandy Montague 6:00
Number four is to do with kids, so if you have kids in your life, this is a great resource for downloading different activities printables, things like that that you can do with the kids in your life. And I think, I mean I don’t know, if you’re like me, you learn something new every time you download, you know, or not download, but every time you do a kid’s activity. I think that the resources available for kids now are so much more extensive than what existed when I was growing up. So I continue to learn a lot, and I love that it’s all organized in one place, versus hours of me searching on the internet. So I have a link to teachervision.com and that’s a place with, like, hundreds of downloads that you could pick for Earth Day. Pick something that speaks to you and then do it with a child that is in your life.
Brandy Montague 6:57
And number five is to take a hike. Literally take a hike, get out in nature. Find a place that you can go and really connect with nature, on Earth Day, you know. I think that one’s a really easy one to say we’re gonna do and then we don’t, or we let it go. If you’re looking for a new hike, I’ve mentioned this a lot but my favorite app is called the All Trails app. It’s really good. There’s tons of reviews of the different hikes so you can really get a feel of whether it’ll work for you. And, yeah, so there’s a link to that in the show notes, and as well as if you want to meditate while you’re hiking. I linked to our meditations that my friend Patti from inner peace yoga and Reiki, and I have taped over the past couple of years, when we’ve done live guided meditations. So there’s a link to all of those, that have been recorded. You could listen to one of those while you’re hiking, as well.
Brandy Montague 7:54
So those are the five things. I hope that one of them speaks to you. I hope you’re excited about Earth Day and Earth Month, and Earth every day, making a difference every day. And I hope. Yeah, I hope to hear from you. I hope to hear what you’re doing, so as always you can connect with me over on Instagram at For Animals For Earth. Okay, bye guys see you next week.
Brandy Montague 8:02
And that’s all for today, thank you so much for tuning in and listening and for supporting the show. If you’re up for it, ratings and reviews are really helping us right now as a new show, you can do those if you listen on Apple or on Stitcher. Otherwise, the best thing you can do to help is to tell a friend. I really appreciate your help in helping us grow this community.
Brandy Montague 8:45
Remember that you can always join me live for interviews at foranimalsforearth.com/live, Just check out that link to see when the next one is scheduled. And if you want to get in touch with me personally, I’d love to hear from you, come say hi. You can DM me on Instagram at For Animals For Earth. Okay, until next time, bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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