Earth Day cannot be contained to one day in April. Although we were not able to have our live Festival again this year, this past month we engaged with over 25 partner organizations to create multiple opportunities for over 1,300 community members to personally take action. Three Environmental Justice Days of Action, three virtual programs, a new food composting program, a raffle raising $3,000, and providing 423 Earth Day Celebration Kits distributed at events and at 4 GDA restaurants during Green Dining Week — it was a very successful month of celebration!

It was a rainy and muddy garden work day at the North County Agricultural Education Center in Pine Lawn, yet 43 volunteers provided 129 hours of labor to install new garden raised beds on April 10 for A Red Circle.

 

April 18th we worked with North Newstead Neighborhood Association to get 63 volunteers to converge on O’Fallon Park in North St. Louis City, donating 170 hours to clean up litter, and then on April 24th, 64 volunteers gave 151 hours of time to clean up the Dutchtown CID in South City. Together, we kept over 22 cubic yards of trash and 3 cubic yards of recyclables from flowing into the Mississippi River through the street storm drains. Volunteers even engaged in Community Science with the Marine Debris Tracker research project which collected nearly 50,000 entries of litter to track how land-based plastic pollution gets into our oceans.

Mary Ann Lazarus was our Keynote Speaker April 23rd on “Resilience and the Power of Community” followed by a beautiful dance performance by CKDC, connecting human impact and the state of our environment in a piece called Human Disturbance. We partnered with the Global Freshwaters Summit and the Missouri Historical Society to host a discussion on the eco-film Invisible Hand and moderated a panel called “Watershed Resiliency Through Food Waste Reduction and Food Justice.” An unlikely pairing, but one that helped to draw the lines between how we eat and grow food with the health of ourselves and our watershed.

We distributed over 400 Earth Day Celebration Kits containing over 20 items to help you achieve sustainability goals like keeping grease out of kitchen drains or engaging with nature through upcycled craft projects or community science. Kits were available for pickup at our office and at 4 different GDA-certified restaurants during Green Dining Week. 15 restaurants donated 20% of the profits to earthday365 for certain menu items purchased during this week.

So the Earth Day Challenge doesn’t need to end on April 22nd! You can make use of reusable bags/cutlery/water bottles or “Eat the Alphabet” any month to support eating less meat. Continue to get outside using alternative transportation, engage with community science projects, or share Household Hazardous Waste tips with your neighbor. We make these choices every day; we are our own sustainability heroes.

Thank you and see you at the St. Louis Earth Day Festival in 2022!