Looking for interesting ways to celebrate Earth Day on Sunday, April 22? Here's what we're thinking:
1. Make your own eco-friendly cleaning products to ensure you're scrubbing away last week's coffee grounds and solidified toothpaste droppings in the greenest way possible.
2. Watch "Avatar," or its predecessor, "Pocahontas." If you prefer your Earth education a little more realistic, grab some baby carrots and hunker down with reruns of "Planet Earth, "Frozen Planet," "Human Planet," or "Life." You may fall in love with Gaia all over again.
3. Sing the Earth Day Anthem. It's a thing! It's really a thing!! And it's set to the tune of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy:"
Joyful, joyful we adore our Earth in all its wonderment
Simple gifts of nature that all join into a paradise
Now we must resolve to protect her
Show her our love throughout all time
With our gentle hand and touch
We make our home a newborn world
Rock on!
4. Speaking of anthems, watch this! Now it's in your head ... forever!
5. Attend an Earth Day festival in your town this weekend.
6. Take your dog, very understanding cat, albino ferret, Vietnamese potbellied pig or other exotic-yet-legal pet for a walk and proudly show off your special connection to the animal kingdom. If you don't have a pet, watch this video about sloths. Actually, even if you have a pet, watch it. Sloths are awesome.
7. Go and finally recycle that gigantic trash bag full of beer cans, or the big pile of old newspapers, or any other pile of expendables you've been ignoring "Hoarders"-style. If you have kids, forgo the popsicle sticks and construction paper crafts, and take them along to the dump or recycling center instead. You may be surprised by how much they enjoy it.
8. Drool over amazing satellite pics with Stratocam, which allows people to share and vote on the best images Googe Earth has to offer. Caution: 100 clicks later, you may have mysteriously lost 45 minutes of your day.
9. Be a kid and go to the zoo or the aquarium. Whether you're eight years old or a multiple thereof, finding that magical thing about the Earth that fascinates you will make you more likely to give it some love the other 364 days of the year.
10. Try kale chips, organic tofu, quinoa, or any other straight-from-the-ground, hippy-dippy food product you think you will hate but have never tried. The Earth: It's delicious!
Bonus thing: Tell us what you like to do! Are you a composting queen, an Earth education master, or a dedicated animal lover? Maybe you like the bake things in the shape of the world? That's cool too. Anyway you choose to play, happy Earth Day!
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