Re-envisioned during COVID-19 pandemic
If you’re disheartened by the cancellation of earthday365’s historic St. Louis Earth Day Festival, fear not! We at earthday365 have re-envisioned how to safely celebrate Earth Day at home and invite you and yours to join us!
In order to bring Earth Day to you, we have put together Earth Day Celebration Kits for families to partake in at-home activities. The kits will include family art projects with how-to videos, community science projects, and ways to connect with the nature around you. Create fantastical art projects from trash, grow seeds in upcycled CD cases, make outdoor clay murals, and head out for nature treasure hunts – just a few examples of the fun possibilities for celebrating Earth Day at home. They will include sustainable gifts, plants, an energy-efficient light bulb, and much more! The kits will also include ways to challenge yourself to be more sustainable and highlight partner events taking place around St. Louis throughout the month of April, aka “Earth Month.”
One of the events we will be hosting is Green Dining Week from April 16th to the 25th, a fundraiser to bring awareness to earthday365’s Green Dining Alliance program and the restaurants who belong to the Alliance. 20% of a specified menu item will go to earthday365 when purchased during that week. Participatin g restaurants currently include The Wolf, SqWires, Clementine’s Creamery, Kounter Kulture, Living Room, Flavor 360, and The Dam.
earthday365 plans to host several Environmental Justice Days of Action throughout the year to address environmental justice issues, such as illegal dumping and food apartheid, in partnership with community organizations. We are kicking off our Environmental Justice Days of Action with A Red Circle and Custom Foodscaping on April 10th at 9am with a Garden Work Day at the North County Agricultural Education Center. Volunteers will help build up their urban farm and plant potatoes for the community. Our next Day of Action will be in O’Fallon Park on April 18th, coordinated by our Young Friends, in partnership with North Newstead Association, Great Rivers Greenway, and Metropolitan Sewer District, sponsored by Missouri Department of Conservation. Volunteers will help clean up trash and debris from the park, as well as contribute to the ecological restoration and rain garden maintenance currently underway.
We are partnering with the Missouri Historical Society to provide programming at the Global Freshwaters Summit as well. We will be screening The Invisible Hand and hosting a discussion about the film on April 19th. On Earth Day, April 22nd, we will host a panel on the topic of Food Justice. Stay tuned for more information on the panel speakers.
What else are we up to during the pandemic? We are helping people compost their food scraps by launching a Food Waste Drop Off at Tower Grove and Ferguson Farmers Markets this season, starting April 10th. The pilot program will accept residential food waste for commercial composting with our partner, Total Organics Recycling and St. Louis Composting. Why food waste? It’s a big climate change driver! For this reason, we’re also launching a regional messaging campaign in partnership with OneSTL to combat Food Waste and keep it out of landfills, where it produces methane.
We at earthday365 are excited to launch these new programs and events in order to further address food waste and local environmental justice issues, and we look forward to sharing them and celebrating Earth Day 2021 with you!
For more information, visit earthday-365.org.