10 Ways You Can Help Prevent Climate Change | Earth Day Series

Welcome to part 2 of my Earth Day series! Earth day is Thursday, April 22nd this year and I know you might be wondering just how much you can do to join the fight against climate change - even if we are still having to stay home. Well, more than ever before, individual action can truly make a difference, especially if it is mobilizing for political transformation.

Our world is warming, extreme weather events are multiplying and intensifying, sea levels are rising, prolonged droughts are putting pressure on food crops, and many animal and plant species are being driven to extinction. The good news is that many people, communities, cities, businesses, schools, faith groups, and other organizations are already taking action. So let’s join them and do our part!

Get Involved

Push your city to support 100% clean energy. Focusing efforts to spread awareness about the benefits of renewable energy can make a huge impact on your community. Especially when it comes to how renewable energy is better than utilizing fossil fuels. You can join the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 Campaign and commit our mayors & city leaders to start changing transportation, planning, and energy policies benefiting our community & environment. Not only that, but the renewables will save a significant amount of money in the long run.

Support a carbon tax, which is a fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels, like coal, oil, and gas. It’s a great way to keep companies in check and add incentives to switch to noncarbon fuels and energy efficiency to protect our atmosphere.
Discover where your reps stand. You can use tools that have been created to track how your representatives have voted on recent climate and science issues, such as govtrack or congress.gov. If you don’t agree with their decision, be sure to get in touch with them right away!
Come together to fight climate change. You don’t need the governments help, though it would be a bonus, special technology, or extra funding to fight climate change. You can fight collectively by getting your neighborhood involved to collaborate, change everyday behaviors, share tips, and reduce energy usage. You can read about a similar, rural village in Britain that has started this no-drama, grassroots movement here.
Attend town hall meetings. What better way to get involved and to ask your representatives than to actually be there in person. The Sierra Club provides talking points for how to ask your congressperson about protecting the EPA. Practice them in the mirror and then get out there and stand up for what’s right!
Support, or start, a sustainability initiative, whether it be at your school, in your workplace, or in your community.
Join a climate event. Check your Facebook events, google it, or follow companies that share events like @keepnaturewild, to find local events. Detroit’s 5th annual VegBash will be Thursday, May 20th. In 2018, they sparked a movement, it is quickly growing - find an event with the Sunrise Movement near you!

Save Energy (and Money)

Get a home energy audit. After most assessments, homeowners save between 5 to 30% on their energy bills and audits can significantly reduce a home’s carbon footprint. Home energy audits are a simple process really, someone will come to your home, analyze how much energy your home may consume (or loose) and give you a list of tips or changes to help make things for efficient.
Change lightbulbs to LEDs. Quality LEDs use 75% less energy, last 25x longer, and are more durable than other bulbs. If a widespread use of LEDs in the United States occurred over the next 10 years, 348 TWh (or 44 large power plants) of annual electrical energy would be saved.
Clean or replace your HVAC filters every 3 months. You should be replacing the filter in your air conditioner or heater because a dirty filter can cause the system to work harder, thus wasting energy and raising your bill.
Use a programmable Thermostat. Our Nest thermostat, or there’s also the Ecobee, keeps track of our preferred temperature, when every is most often used in the surrounding area, and can program our temperatures to make sure we are truly saving in our energy bill. It also has a scheduling program so we can customize the temperatures throughout the day when no one may be home. I also love that our Nest keeps track of our energy efficiency and gives us ‘leaf points’ so we know how we rank among other energy users and can try to be the best!
Wash clothes in cold water. Studies have shown that washing clothing in cold water is actually just as effective as using warm water. And actually, about 75% of the total energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions produces by a single load of laundry comes from warming the water itself!
Hang-dry your clothes instead of using the dryer.
When appliance shopping, buy new appliances with the Energy Star label. Keeping up with proper appliance maintenance is always the more sustainable option. But if your appliance has finally bit the bullet, be sure to choose an appliance that is more efficient, meaning it can help lower your energy cost and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Design your workspace or most enjoyed room in the house around the natural light. So many of us are working from home now, so why be stationed in a room where we have to keep the light on all the time? Is there an alternative spot you can set up that would have better natural light? In addition to saving your energy bill, natural lighting actually has LOADS of health benefits as well such as boosting vitamin D, improving sleep, and fighting off seasonal depressions.
Unplug electronic devices when they aren’t in use. Even when you have a device powered off, it can still be drawing electricity. About a quarter of all residential energy consumption is used on devices in idle power, or ‘sleep mode’ costing upward of $19 billion in electricity bills. Be sure to check things like your cable box, laptop, and even your speakers because they can use almost as much power when they are off as when they are on. Unplug your devices, use smart plugs, or group items into a power strip so you can affectively turn off the power and save energy at the end of the day.
Learn about water management. If you live in the city, every drop of water you use is charged double because they assume the water coming in the faucet must also be heading down the drain. Learn about ways to reuse water (such as using your pasta water or boiled vegetable water to water your plants) instead of excessively using fresh water. Water management also helps cities become more resilient in storms, droughts, and other natural disasters, AND save energy. Put less stress on municipal systems and replenish underground aquifers (we will talk about other options in a minute).
Check your insulation. Check your homes insulation, weather stripping, and caulk because adding more/new resources can help cut energy bills by more than 25%, keeping your home warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Invest In Renewables

Add solar panels to your house. Solar power prices are becoming more and more affordable and an increasingly diverse group of companies are offering new products. You can check out this resource guide from the U.S. Department of Energy or enter your address into Google’s Project Sunroof to calculate the potential benefits of home installation.
Call your utility company and ask about buying clean electricity. Be sure to contact your utility company to truly find out how much of your electricity is coming from renewable energy and see if you can opt in for ‘green pricing’ in order to pay slightly more in exchange for electricity generated from clean, renewable power (an alternative to buying green energy yourself).

Eat For The Planet

Homegrown is full of benefits. Growing your own organic produce is more cost affective, eating fresh produce improves health and increases vitality, gardening is amazing for the body and mind, and gardening also increases food diversity (I’ll make a whole separate post on this because I could keep going!).
Plant a community garden. If you live in an apartment complex, ask around to see if there would be interest in a community garden, draft an agreement, or talk to your landlords about the possibility. If you are a part of a church community, think about starting one up there as well! The American Community Gardening Association is full of resources and recommendations on how to start up, manage, and maintain a public patch. If you don’t have the resources to start one, check around and see if there is already one in your community. A community garden is a wonderful way to meet neighbors and collectively add something to your neighborhood. If you are in a city area, roof gardens are a wonderful way of transforming unused space, benefiting the environment, and cooling our increasingly warming cities.
Eat less meat. We already know that it’s best to go local for food, checking your local farm stands, produce markets, and farmers markets. More than 80% of farmland is used for livestock, producing 58% of greenhouse gas emissions, 57% of water pollution, 56% of air pollution, and 33% of freshwater withdrawals so whether you choose to cut them out entirely, reduce to local farms (with safe practices), or reducing your meat and dairy intake a few times a week is one of the single biggest ways you can reduce your impact on Earth.
Reduce food waste. I encourage you to plan out your meals and only buy what you need. This will help save money from buying less food, conserve energy, resources, and reduces methane emissions from landfills. Food waste is a HUGE problem in the U.S. at around 38 million tons a year, according to the EPA.
Stop using bottled water. Landfills contain more than 2 million tons of plastic bottles, 1.5 million barrels of oil are used to manufacture water bottles every year, and some companies go to underdeveloped areas and take their only fresh/clean water sources for profit.
Join a CSA. A Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from farmers. It’s a wonderful way to help support farmers and eat local, fresh produce (and we have already talked about its proven benefits). If you are a backyard gardener looking for some side income, consider joining too!
Start composting. Did you know that landfills are so compact that even biodegradable object don’t compost? Not only that, but transforming food scraps and lawn clippings into compost will provide natural and safe fertilizers for your gardens, lawns, or indoor plants. If you are living in an apartment (homes can use these too), you should consider the Bokashi form of composting where you can compost almost anything, it provides ‘tea’ for your plants while breaking down materials, is nearly odorless because of its sealing lid system, and it only takes a matter of weeks for the materials to be ready to add to the garden.

Inside Your Home & In Your Yard (or balcony)

When shopping for furniture, either shop with sustainably harvested wood and fabrics, buy used, or upcycle. When shopping for furniture, check to see if the wood has the Forest Stewardship Council logo, which is a collection of 380 million acres of certified forest that combat deforestation. Alternatively, check antique stores, Facebook marketplace, garage sales for gently used furniture that you can move right into your home or upcycle to repurpose the furniture. We found our couch at a garage sale for $40 that would have cost well over $1k in stores!
Buy sustainable fashion - whether it be sustainable brands or buying used. The average American throws away about 80 pounds of clothing a year. Fast fashion is designed to damage easily, making it wasteful and the environmental impact is devastating.
Recycle well worn clothing. Be sure to find local areas to recycle your textiles, like this center in Ann Arbor, MI. There’s a handful of retailers that offer recycling programs as well, like H&M or Patagonia.

Collect your rainwater. You can either build a downspout planter box, make a rain garden, or capture the water in rain barrel system. You can do this in the comfort of an apartment too! Capturing your rainwater to use can help cool streets by saving on water transportation.
Grow food not lawns, or just lessen your grass amount with drought-tolerant plants. The U.S’s most widely grown agricultural product (and the most toxic) is grass, covering about 42 million acres nation wide. Our lawns require extra water, often times gas-powered equipment, and fertilizers that pollute the waterways (which pollute much worse than farmers since they aren’t regulated or versed in professional landscaping).

Green Your Commute

Walk, bike, or use public transportation if you can. Not only is walking or biking better for your mind, body, and planet, but using any three of those forms of transportation over a single-passenger car can lower greenhouse gas emissions up to 76% and preserve our roads.
Work from home one day each week. I know this is something a lot of us are doing right now, probably not by choice, but studies show that 45% of the U.S. workforce has jobs that are suitable for full-time or part-time telecommuting. A few less days in the office means a few less cars on the road, not to mention the positive impacts it can have on the worker.
Make sure your tires are properly inflated and keep up on car maintenance (gas cap). You can improve your gas mileage anywhere from 0.6% to 3% by keeping your tires properly inflated. Better gas mileage = fewer trips to the pump, saving money, and reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. A loose, cracked or damaged gas cab allows gas to escape from your tank, wasting fuel and gas money.
Calculate your carbon footprint. Using an online tool like this one from the Nature Conservancy can show you exactly where your carbon footprint needs to be tweaked and just how much you are contributing.
Only use a carwash. It may seem better to wash your car at home, but many carwashes actually reuse their water and only spray regulated amounts (usually around 12-18 gallons of water per vehicle, compared to 100 gallons at home).
If you have to fly, buy carbon offsets. Many carriers offer buying offsets, downsizing from business class to coach cuts carbon usage, and ultimately limiting flights is the best.
Bring your own shopping bags. I think we all know the benefits of this one by now! Plastic bags take hundreds of years to break down, contaminate soil & waterways, and cause widespread marine animal death. Switch to reusable bags and use them consistently!
Start a carpool. If you can’t use public transit (because lets face it, some of the U.S. cities just don’t have the best system), try starting a carpool or a bike-sharing program.

Take Care Of Your Neighborhood

Pick up trash while you’re out.
Turn a parking space into a park. Whether it be temporary community events or installations, or encouraging the policy to have to city turn unused parking spaces into public parks.
Plant a tree. Trees add so much to an urban, or forest, landscape! They cool down urban landscapes, soak up CO2, release oxygen, and shield against traffic noise. Many cities have tree initiative, planting services, or require permits, so be sure to check with your local rules before you start digging. Local conservations might host planting events or you can volunteer/donate at project like One Tree Planted.
Shop local. Local businesses provide our communities with jobs, reduce transportation costs, reduce carbon emissions, and support local families. I’ll be making a full list of all of Michigan’s zero waste stores in the near future!
Pedestrianize a street. There are car-free cities worldwide that have transformed their corridors into a pedestrian areas. Are there any streets near you that could be car-free?
Help track and measure green performance in your building. Small improvements are simple and can make a huge difference if every building were to contribute. Set a goal, track your building’s performance, and figure out how to improve it (this goes for your office building too)!
Find inspiration from similar cities. Cities all over the globe have taken steps to fight climate change and sometimes the best solutions are ones that are already in affect. Go ahead and borrow those, or similar ideas, that would best fit your community!
Green your parkway. You know that spot between the sidewalk and the curb? You can replace whatever is there with a stormwater garden. This will allow water to naturally percolate into the ground, alleviate flooding, and help filter & clean our water on its way back underground. Or, you can mix in a pollinators haven!
Add books about climate change, sustainability, and other relating topics in your nearest little free library. Little Free Libraries is the world’s largest book-sharing movement and what better way to spread knowledge than through such a wonderful movement.
Keep an eye on local air pollution. You can use apps and websites to keep an eye on your local air pollution. Be sure to stay indoors, close windows, and limit outdoor exposure during high pollution days. If you are adding pollution fighters to your community, this will also be a good way to track your progress!

Fight For Your Community

Join local clean-ups. Communities and businesses across the U.S. are working to make their rivers, parks, and neighborhoods cleaner & more enjoyable. You can find or host local clean-ups right here! Also, be sure to check Facebook events or to make your own so that others can join in the service.
Don’t use single-use items (especially in preservations!). One of the quickest ways to cut back on our pollution and liter it to completely stop using single-use items. Weeki Wachee State Park has completely banned single-use items on its waterways, join me in emailing our DNR to implement similar bans so we can have crystal clear waterways again!
Retrofit your local highway. Even the most destructive urban infrastructure can be reinvented for new life whether it be petitioning to beautify underpasses and highways or removing the highway completely.
Preserve the night sky. About 99% of people living in the United States and Europe live under light-polluted skies - this unnecessary lighting wastes energy and money. Illuminate only the places that need it, put shields on lights so they point down, and turn off all unnecessary lights. You can also join over a dozen towns and cities that are official Dark Sky Communities.
Will rising sea levels affect your city? Rising sea levels threaten to submerge entire cities by 2100, this puts over 800 million people at risk. The truth of the matter is that this will affect marginalized communities first. Find out how you can help here.
Advocate for better building codes, energy efficiency, and transparency. As stated before, buildings are responsible for nearly half of the energy consumption in the U.S. That makes the built world, those who design, and those who maintain it, the key to solving this climate crisis. Everyone, including architects and planners, can push for better energy efficiency and ratings in housings/offices.
Tell your city to implement transportation initiatives and go car-free. This is similar to the pedestrian initiative earlier, except this pushes our cities to fund reliable public transportation!
Keep the fossil fuel industry accountable. Oil and gas companies still have a ways to go, we must keep the pressure on these corporations to go green.
Visit State & National Parks. Many parks and reservations may be drastically changing within a few decades because of climate change. Be sure to visit them, sign up for park passes, and support your local DNRs to contribute to the protection of our wildlife areas

Be Conservative With Time & Waste (yes I mean your trash)

Downsize. I’m currently listening to Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and although we are personally already well past most of her advice, there are SOOOO many wonderful tips in here about how to properly organize and minimize your home. You don’t need some ‘30 day fix’ or organization hacks, you just need to find what “sparks joy”, give it a place, and get rid of the rest of the ‘filler’.
Recycle. After you reduce (or downsize), reuse and recycle! This doesn’t just apply to packaging - find ways to add it to other aspects of your life. Are your decorations sustainable and recyclable? Find programs, like this one, that recycle the more difficult objects or the objects that aren’t normally taken in your local recycling program. Don’t have a recycling program? Find a drop-off center and collect with family members or neighbors that way you are taking a large load at once, to save on travel and gas. Or, advocate for your city to get a recycling program.

Educate Yourself and Talk To Others

Listen to podcasts. I’ll make an all inclusive list of these in another post! But for now, check out Warm Regards - a big-picture, science-focused look at climate change, from glaciology to green energy, hosted by paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill and ProPublica journalist Andy Revkin.
Read Books. A few books to get you started would be: Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes; Climate Change, What Everyone Needs To Know by Joseph Romm; The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert; and Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning by George Monbiot.
Get your kids involved. Children are never too young to take on climate action! Offer everyday ways for children to be mindful about the planet. NASA’s Climate Kids provides wonderful resources for children and grownups alike. Or, you can watch cartoons like Disney’s Wall-E.
Support publications discussing climate change. I love to listen to NPR’s climate segments. It’s always a great idea to listen to great journalism, which makes us better citizens and more well informed.

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ResourcesSearra LiggettApril 16, 2021Earth Day, Climate Change, Sustainability, Environment, Plastic Free, Outdoor, Zero WasteComment