This year’s celebration, Earth Day 2013, marks the 43rd Earth Day to date.

Here’s a great infographic showing the history of Earth Day and green awareness:

10 things you can do on Earth Day…

1. Attend local Earth Day events. Sign up for Earth Day Network updates to find out about events taking place near you.
2. Collect ladybugs and place them gently on your prized rose bush. Ladybugs love to eat aphids and can help keep your roses disease-free without harmful chemicals or harm to the ecosystem.
3. Bone up on the facts of recycling. A great place to start: Kars4Kids’ handy infographic on car recycling. We all know about recycling household items, but the impressive facts on car recycling may surprise and even spur you to action. Why is that old car still sitting around, unused in your garage?
4. Stop wasting those potato peels and other vegetable matter that could enrich your soil. Spend part of Earth Day making a desktop compost bin.
5. Have an old t-shirt or pillowcase you hate to throw away? Turn it into a reusable shopping bag. Here’s how.
6. It’s April! What a perfect time to start your own vegetable garden. Live in a high rise? Grow a windowsill herb garden or how about a vertical garden?
7. Hold a neighborhood swap. Invite all your friends to bring used items they no longer need, from books, to clothes, to gardening tools and have people swap items. Put out some light refreshments to keep things lively and fun.
8. Organize a carpool. Instead of you and your neighbor both traveling to the same part of town for your jobs, pile into just the one car. Save gas, money, and the environment. What could be bad? School carpooling also gives parents a bit of a break from driving at least some of the time.
9. Guilty of leaving your computer on 24/7? Join a distributed computing network for modeling the effects of climate change. Distributed computer networks harness the power of idle personal computers to carry out complex computer tasks. Check out climateprediction.net a distributed computer network sponsored by Oxford University and assorted colleagues with the aim of helping scientists run climate models while network computers are running idle.
10. Take a hike. Enjoy the beauty of natural settings in your area. Above all, Earth Day is a time to take stock and appreciate the bounty of nature.
11. Join the movement! The Heal Ourselves, Heal the World campaign’s mission is to increase positive children’s entertainment and includes a call to action: We encourage mass media companies (television, radio, publications and social media conglomerates) to broadcast, highlight and print positive stories that support the healing of our worlds and implore them to increase the amount of children’s programming that illuminates, inspires and transforms.

Earth Day graphic and “10 things” provided by the Kars4Kids car donation program “Responsible vehicle recycling for future generations.

Like elephant green on facebook.