With the beautiful weather in the forecast, it’s the perfect time to go green and celebrate Earth Day! Here are some of our favorite tips and activities to make the local Fredericksburg area more sustainable.
Favorite Earth Day Tips & Activities
- Start a vegetable garden: with Square Foot Gardening, it’s so quick and easy to begin! They even provide planting guides, supply lists, and how-to-start videos.
- Plant a tree: follow REC’s guide and incorporate more landscaping around your home to reduce your home’s heating and air conditioning needs.
- Love the local outdoors: visit a local park, walk along a trail, or go for a hike in the woods.
- Arrange a stream or canal clean-up: make clean-up fun by grabbing your closest friends, trash bags, and gloves and heading to any nearby stream or canal and get the trash out!
- Pick up trash with the kids: head out to a local park armed with bags and gloves and pick up trash; or, grab trash when you see it along sidewalks and notice how your kids will quickly follow suit
- Carpool or ride the bus to work: share a ride with friends or ride the Fred Transit bus
- Start a compost: whether you live in a house or an apartment, with minimal effort you can break those food scraps into gold.
- Reuse, recycle or repurpose those plastic shopping bags: try your hand at weaving plastic bags or find the closest store that collects plastic bags for recycling purposes
- Start a pollinator-friendly garden: bring color and wildlife to your garden and help contribute to the crops
- Connect with people about plants: use the locally created Plants Map and build local plant maps and connect with others
- Install a programmable thermostat: follow DOE’s guide to save energy and costs while you’re away and asleep
- Get involved with upcoming local events:
- Tues., Apr 23rd – celebrate Earth Day at UMW
- Fri., Apr 26th – tree planting with Friends of the Rappahannock
- Sat., Apr 27th – Earth Day Festival at Old Mill Park