Earth Day 2010

Earth Day is fast approaching (April 22) and I've been trying to decide what I want to do to serve the planet. I already do a fair amount in my day to day life but a few things have come to mind. Ever since first starting to read the No-Impact Man blog (http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/) I have been thinking of starting a no-impact sabbath where basically once a week or once a month or whatever you have a day where you commit to generating no waste, no emissions, etc. I have also been thinking about making a commitment to really get plastic out of my life. But I started thinking about all the useful (and frivolous) objects that are made of plastic. I wouldn't be able to buy DVDs, video games, camera accessories, new lights for my bicycle, any food with plastic packaging...the thought is pretty overwhelming. It's a real problem because my ideals say I should give up plastic all together but my daily life almost requires that I live in plastic city.

So I started poking around at http://www.earthday.org/. I found that a lot of the suggestions were either too weak or too strong. Their suggestions for what to do on Earth Day fall into two categories: events and pledges. Events are things like talks and discussions about the environment and global climate change (which are useful and fun but not really what I'm looking for). Pledges are pretty self-explanatory: commitments to do something for the planet. I found that a lot of the pledges are things I already do or things that are a little extreme (like planting 150,000 trees).

But I did bump into the pledge of learning about invasive plants and doing what you can to mitigate their growth on your own property. Most of us have a pretty bad bittersweet problem and I've always wanted to something about the awful stuff in our yard. Maybe that's what I'll do this year. I feel a little odd about the picture below being an invasive. As I mention in my comment, invasives are often beautiful plants that were brought over as ornamentals. What are your thoughts about invasives? Can we plant something that's a weed if we think we can control its growth? Can we control its growth? And what will you be doing for Earth Day 2010?