Happy Earth Day Season!

Earth Day is an inspiring time for many people! Here are a bunch of cool things we can do to pitch in and live more in harmony with our sweet planet.

Edible plants and natural cosmetics

Growing Aloe Vera and using it as a facial cosmetic is a fantastic way to take good care of your skin in a 100% natural way. When we produce our own cosmetics, we avoid the whole manufacturing/packaging/ shipping process and end up with a pure product.

Google lens makes identifying edible plants quick and easy. It’s amazing how many ARE edible. Lots of wild lettuce out there. Prickely Lettuce grows in the yard here and is delicious as an organic wild green. Another good one is Purslane, which is more dense and gelatinous. This website has an extensive index to help identify edible weeds/greens/ herbs that grow in our yards. It’s a good idea to learn to allow the wild plants to share the garden boxes with plants we grow on purpose for food.

Check out this video that describes Purslane and how we can eat it.

It is incredibly empowering to be able to forage for wild food, not to mention a beautiful skill to have if you ever need it, one that can be developed on an ongoing basis.

This year, I made citrus tea and snacked on these edible citrus blossoms.

Each year, citrus trees bloom with the most fragrant flowers. Citrus blossoms are a special luxurious culinary ingredient to enjoy for once they start blooming in Spring. These edible flowers make incredible culinary ingredients and garnishes. If you are in a place where this happens, try making tea with them, the little flowers are really yummy and fun to garnish meals with.

Collecting Rainwater

Stockpiling rain not only helps alleviate potential flooding during the rainy seasons, but also is great for watering all the garden and trees growing on one’s property.

Nature Documentaries

There’s a lot of awareness developing in the field of keeping the planet healthy, and understanding the relationship between all living things coexisting in our sweet planet home, and its natural systems. Check out Our Living World on Netflix–stunning footage of the epic beauty of Earth’s natural landscapes and biodiversity.

The wild world is savage indeed and getting to see how all the different players inter-relate is so helpful in developing a wholistic picture of the circle of life and how its vital components all fit together in keeping our planet pure and beautiful. Shows like Our Living World are helping to raise awareness in developing the necessary respect for what our planet needs to remain habitable for everyone.

Planet Earth is so infinitely rich with resources, everything we need to stay healthy. That’s why the rainforests are so essential to keep in tact. Organizations like Rainforest Action Network, and World Wildlife Fund do a great job of advocating for the health and protection of our forests and building sustainable minded community folk.

Animal rescues and personality stories like The Dodo to help spread awareness about treating animals kindly and with dignity and helping them whenever we can, and advocating for their well-being and making it a priority! These stories are gold. Animals are such beautiful little souls and shining the spotlight on people who help them to have good lives and care is a movement that is warming the heart of the world.

Reusing & Reducing Packaging

Another fantastic way to conserve resources is to reuse packaging in creative ways!

Let’s hear everyone’s ideas. This is something really worth applying our creativity toward!

Let’s make it more and more popular! We can shop the bulk bins and refill our containers of rice, chocolate chips, flours, beans & all things bulk.

Let’s celebrate not taking things that we know we are going to throw away in half an hour. Let’s respect our planet home that is so good to us and keep it clean and respect its resources that are harvested to make bags that get thrown away so soon. Let’s bring our own bags, and bottles, and cups, and utensils. Let’s move away from the unsustainable/lazy/shortsighted lifestyle of creating so much trash everyday with togo food containers. Let’s really drill the images of MICRO-PLASTICS in our bodies, micro plastics start as macro-plastics. Let’s work collectively to reject plastic wrapping and phase micro plastics in our bodies, and all around OUT already.

Let’s remember to ASK before just bagging things for folks, I think we can all agree that the days of just plastic bagging are becoming part of history! I know it’s a hard habit to break, and it can give our hands something to do to avoid feeling awkward at the checkout, but let’s get uncomforable, what have we got to lose? Let’s be creative about how to get items transported safely. Let’s stop making so much trash while it’s our choice and we’re not forced to. We just have to be AWARE.

I try to remind myself that Everyday is Earth Day, and live it like a mindset.

All photography by: Anna Thoreau courtesy of Aesdiopod Designs @aesdiopod