Each year, Earth day is on April 22. The United States is not the only place that is actively trying to educate people about what is happening to our Earth. When I was living in Japan, they didn’t have an ‘Earth Day’ per se, but they did have a day dedicated to be thankful and reflect on nature, things around us, etc. Did you know that each year, Earth Day has a different theme? For this year, the theme was ‘Restore Our Earth’ and had the intent of resining us that we need to protect our planet. There are tons of people who brush off the idea of doing more sustainable things to help our planet, BUT if we want our great grandchildren and great great grandchildren to live on this Earth with non-detrimental environmental issues we have to do something NOW. It takes everyone to do tiny things, not a few people to do monumental things.
For example, I live in California, and some counties have banned businesses from giving out plastic straws. Yes, this is a start, but it doesn’t make sense for one county to have this ban and the neighboring county not to. Another thing California is doing (and people other states as well) is encouraging people to bring their own reusable bags when they go grocery shopping. If you don’t bring a reusable bag you are charged a small fee of I think .25 cents? Yes, this has made a lot of people switch to bringing their own bags, and yes this is a start, but again- It’s an effort that has to be done by everyone. While I was living in Japan ‘my bag’ was the same concept of people bringing their own reusable grocery bags while shopping, but what I didn’t understand was the TONNNNNNS of bags stores gave you when you bought omiyage (souvineers). I went to Disneyland once and bought snacks for my friends and ended up with about ten small plastic bags for me to distribute the gifts. I felt so guilty throwing away the plastic bags I used them for my garbage for several months. This example was only one time I went to Disneyland; each souvenir shop does the same thing. It was baffling to me. In hindsight, Japan has a much better garbage/ recycle system than in America so they might be able to use more resources like that, but still! I’m interested in learning about how other countries ‘save the planet’
xoxo,e
