Seven things you can do to help the planet on earth day

The International Mother Earth Day is commemorated every year on the 22nd of April. It is a global movement that celebrates the planet and encourages people to be more environmentally friendly.

The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 in the US after a devastating oil spill. “Earth Day is the largest, most recognisable face of the environmental movement,” said Kathleen Rogers, President of the Earth Day Network.

The health of our planet is in our hands and every action or small change will have a positive impact on the earth. Do you know how you can contribute? Here are seven things that you can start doing today.

Reduce your need to buy new products or use less, resulting in a smaller amount of waste. When you need to buy, consider buying eco-friendly products.

Reuse items whenever possible, take your own plastic bags the next time that you go shopping and use both sides of paper. Try to use disposable products into some other form. Just don’t throw them away.

Recycling unwanted paper, bottles, etc. is a great earth saving tip. Recycled paper takes 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution to make.

Take a shorter shower. Every two minutes you save on your shower can conserve more than 15 litres of water.

Brush without running, this can save 6 litres of water per minute.

Keep a jug or a bottle of drinking water in the fridge. Running tap water to cool it off for drinking water is wasteful.

Turn the switch off. If you see that a light or an electrical device is switched on, but no one is there to use it, turn it off. Turn off computers at night. By turning off your computer instead of leaving it in sleep mode, you can save 40 watt-hours per day.

Change the type of light bulb you use, use compact fluorescent light bulbs. They last eight times as long as standard incandescent bulbs and they use 75 % less energy.