Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day! We need to be good planetary stewards of the Earth, our planet, and its natural resources to keep our planet clean to improve the health and well-being of all and to keep natural beauty of the Earth intact and long-lasting for generations to come. How can we do this? Here are some ideas and a baker’s dozen of 13 tips:
1. Recycle anything that can be recycled as often as you are able to do so. If necessary, hire a recycling service to pick up your items to-be-recycled weekly. Our weekly recycling service picks up #1-#5 recyclable items.
2. Pick up trash and litter and recycle discarded items that can be recycled.
3. Reduce our energy use, rely on natural energy sources more (e.g., sunlight but be careful of excessive exposure to the sun: skin cancer risk).
4. Have neighborhood trash pickup and recycling days. Work together to make our planet more beautiful. Designate accountability partners for picking up trash and recycling, especially in your neighborhood, city, and area.
5. Please pick up your own pet waste instead of leaving it where it falls.
6. Take care to discard yard waste/tree branches when they accumulate, use a garbage service if one is available to help you pick it up.
7. Please pickup trash on the running trails and any obstacles that anyone could trip over (not just the proverbial and actual banana peels). I try to remove branches whenever I can so other runners don’t trip over them.
8. Before you burn things outdoors, think of the environmental consequences and the impact upon those of us who are trying to breathe clean air. We all are entitled to clean air to breathe as easily as possible. This is a serious challenge for air quality asthmatics like me.
9. Encourage others to join you in these efforts to recycle, reduce energy use, pickup trash, etc.
10. Don’t forget to recycle your shredded paper. We go through massive quantities of “mixed paper” including junk mail and shredding but our recycling service picks it up for us.
11. Plant trees not just on Earth Day, but also on Arbor Day, and any other day that you can. By the way, the photo above is a maple tree in our backyard that I photographed yesterday using a Snapchat filter. The maple tree is one of the first trees we planted in our backyard.
12. Please prune your tree branches that intersect with city sidewalks, running trails, and walkways to prevent injuries to others. The city prunes city trees to limit its liability but we homeowners need to do this too for that reason and to prevent injuries to others.
13. Teach our children these lessons early so that they will be well-trained in these healthy habits of planetary stewardship.