Earth Day is really something I should have paid more attention to all my life. I’ve always loved the Earth as a planet, frankly. It’s doing a great job. I also love everything on it, including trees, bees, Hummers, and Miley Cyrus. However, I never did much for Earth Day, or even remembered when it was.

You guys, it is April 22. I mean I know today is, but that’s also when Earth Day is, every year. For 45 years now!

On Earth Day, it’s important to think about what you can do to help the Earth. No matter how small or how big, you should do something, for the Earth, for your self, and for your friends! You see, this year’s theme for Earth Day is, “It’s Our Time To Lead.”

I challenge you to gather your buddies and do something together. Lead them straight to the love of Planet Earth! There are lots of resources online for ideas, but here are a few of mine:

• Find a local park or green space that is in need of some love. See if you can plant some plants, one for each of you! The best part of this idea is that you can check back later to see how your plants are doing and tend to them as friends for a while.
• Crack open a bottle of wine, invite your pals over, and sign up for paperless billing! Sound boring? That’s probably why you haven’t all done it yet. That’s where the wine comes in. Feel free to substitute with gin, beer, or iced tea, as the season dictates.
• Get together with your family or roommates and see what small ways you can change your living style to be more green. It could be as small as turning off more lights, or as big as buying a hand crank washing machine and air drying your clothes!
• Personally, I’m going to stop printing out all my emails and filing them in a series of drawers by mood. I estimate it will save several forests worth of trees annually.

The Earth Day Network Footprint Calculator is a super cute, interactive quiz that will make you feel very bad about each and every thing you do. If we lived like me, we would need 5.6 planet Earths to sustain everyone! That’s pretty awful, I’m doing terribly. It suggested some things I could do to reduce my footprint, but they barely helped (down by .5 Earths).

I feel properly shamed.

Happy Earth Day!