River Cleanup, Park Maintenance For Milwaukee Earth Day 2022

MILWAUKEE, WI — Earth Day 2022 falls on a Friday this year and local organizations are offering volunteer opportunities to clean up Milwaukee's river system to commemorate.

Wisconsin residents can sign up for spring cleanup with the Milwaukee Riverkeeper to pick up "interesting and sometimes bizarre" trash in and around the Milwaukee River on Saturday, the organization said in its website. Gloves, trash bags and quality free t-shirts will be given to participating volunteers, and people can help clean up more than 80 locations.

Volunteers can also check out multiple park cleanups hosted by the Urban Ecology Center, which will clean up neighborhoods around Washington Park, Riverside Park and the Menomonee Valley on Saturday.

Want to take individual action to clean up the environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Here are five habits to adopt on Earth Day to address climate change.

1. Don’t Drive; Walk Or Bike Instead

Did you know that parking the car and walking or biking to where you need to get in Wisconsin would significantly reduce your carbon footprint?

That’s according to an Imperial College London study published in the journal Global Environmental Change. The study, the first to look at how lifestyle changes can reduce carbon emissions, found that was the case even in European cities where many people already walk and cycle to their destinations.

2. Plant Some Trees

If everyone in Wisconsin joined with billions of others and planted a tree, an area the size of the United States could be reforested, increasing the world’s tree canopy by a third without disrupting agriculture or city development, and blotting out about 100 years of carbon emissions.

That’s according to “The global tree restoration potential,” the first study ever to look at how many trees the planet can support.

“Our study clearly shows that forest reforestation is the best climate change solution available today, lead author of the study, ETH Zürich researcher Tom Crowther, said in a statement to National Geographic.

However, National Geographic said it could take more than 100 years to add enough mature forest to achieve significant carbon reduction, especially as about 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide — the result of burning fossil fuels — are added to the atmosphere every year, Glen Peters, research director at Norway’s Center for International Climate Research, told National Geographic.

3. Don't Buy Fast Fashion

The average American discards 80 pounds of clothing a year, and 85 percent of it ends up in landfills, where the material used to make it produces methane. Although carbon dioxide has a longer lasting effect on climate change, methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

One way to offset that is to stop buying cheap, trendy fashion that goes out of style quickly, according to Columbia Climate School at Columbia University. It’s often shipped from low-wage countries overseas, so the use of fossil fuels to get it here also adds to a person’s individual carbon footprint.

A more sustainable approach is to buy higher-quality, U.S.-manufactured clothing. Or even better, Columbia Climate School advises, buy vintage or recycled clothing at thrift and consignment stores around YOUR METRO AREA or upcycle unwanted clothing in some other way.

4. Switch Out Your Lightbulbs

If you haven’t already switched out your lightbulbs — away from incandescent bulbs that waste 90 percent of their energy as heat to LEDs (light emitting diodes) — Earth Day is a good time to do so. LED bulbs use a quarter of the energy as incandescent bulbs and last 25 times as long.

LEDs are also preferable to compact fluorescent bulbs sometimes found in table lamps, according to Columbia Climate School. They emit about 80 of their energy as heat, and they also contain mercury.

A couple of other easy ways to save energy and reduce your carbon footprint: Lowering the water heater thermostat to 120 degrees Fahrenheit will save about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year; and installing a low-flow shower head will save about 350 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.

Also, turn off lights when leaving a room, unplug electronic devices when they’re not in use, and lower your thermostat in the winter and raise it in the summer.

5. Change How You Eat

Another effective way to reduce your carbon footprint is to change how you eat. Published research supports adding more plant-based meals and steering away from red meat in particular because it uses a lot of feed, water and land to produce and also produces methane gas. (It’s important to point out, though, that not everyone agrees beef production is bad for the planet.)

But research supporting more plant-based diets is plentiful:

A 2017 study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters found red meat production can have more than 100 times the environmental impact as plant-based foods.

• Related: Meat That Never Mooed, Oinked Or Clucked Changes How America Eats

And according to University of Michigan researchers, 6 pounds of carbon dioxide were emitted in the production of a single serving of beef. Comparatively, less than half a pound of carbon dioxide was produced in the production of a single serving of rice, legumes, carrots, apples or potatoes.

Another University of Michigan study comparing the environmental costs of quarter-pound plant-based and beef burgers found the former requires 99 percent less water and 93 percent less land, results in 90 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions and requires only about half the energy to produce.

You don’t have to go whole hog in cutting meat from your diet, but adding vegan or vegetarian meals a few times a week can reduce your carbon footprint, according to experts.