SANTA BARBARA — The Community Environmental Council (CEC) is kicking off the annual Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival with the Earth Day — Every Day Campaign.
The campaign runs April 1 through April 21 and invites individuals to take meaningful, personal actions to help the environment. Together we can help our communities reduce climate impact and, at the same time, create healthy habit changes for ourselves.
People of all ages can take the pledge at https://bit.ly/3cEbvK6
Participants can share pictures of the actions they are taking on Instagram and Facebook and include #SBEarthDay #EarthDayEveryDay to earn a chance to win prizes. Winners will be announced during CEC’s Virtual Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival being held ?Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, April 22-24. The free festival is available to view on SBEarthday.org.
Created by CEC Partnership Council Member and UC Santa Barbara Environmental Studies Lecturer Deborah Williams, the Earth Day — Every Day Campaign offers individuals an opportunity to make meaningful actions part of their daily lives. We celebrate Earth Day each year on April 22, but treading more lightly on the planet is something we can do every single day. The Earth Day — Every Day pledge is designed with clear options so everyone to take part in their own way.
“There are so many reasons to take personal action, including reducing our negative impacts on threatened and endangered species, air and water pollution, plastic pollution, water scarcity and climate change,” said Williams. “During the last five years, my family has conscientiously researched what we could do in our day-to-day lives to help the planet and our community’s environment, which turned into Earth Day — Every Day.” She continued on to share that her family has implemented at least one recommended action in each of the commitments and, in addition to reducing their carbon footprint significantly, they found that all of the actions increased their quality of life, making the experience fun and very rewarding.
The campaign starts with a pledge that allows people to choose the commitments that appeal to them to commit to for the 21 days. Then, they can share photos tagged with #SBEarthDay and #EarthDayEveryDay to participate in a contest for prizes chosen at random during the Earth Day Festival live stream.
“We are thrilled to work with Deborah on this project and to provide individual action and habit change opportunities during Earth Month and beyond. The commitments are incredibly well-researched and provide a wide variety of engagement points. We believe individual action is empowering and can lead to a ripple effect of climate activism throughout the community,” said Kathi King, CEC’s Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival Director.
King is also excited to invite the community to join the virtual Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival from April 22 -24.
This year’s theme is #CelebrateClimateLeadership and each day will have a different focus:
- Thursday, April 22 – Youth Leadership
- Friday, April 23 – Business Leadership
- Saturday, April 24 – Community Leadership
Featured speakers include Annie Leonard from Greenpeace USA and Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-CA), with musical performances from Kenny Loggins, Zach Gill and others. For the full line-up, visit SBEarthDay.org.
CEC’s Earth Day Festival production partners are contributing their time and expertise to produce the virtual event. These generous partners include Carp Events, Central Coast Clean Cities Coalition (C5), Cultivate Events, Explore Ecology, LOACOM, Mercury Press International, New Noise Music Foundation, Oniracom, Pharos Creative, West Beach Films, UCSB Arts & Lectures, Tri-County Regional Energy Network, and Write Kinda Girl.
Sponsors currently include Marborg Industries, the City of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Clean Energy, Carp Growers, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, Oniracom, Santa Barbara Independent, Advanced Veterinary Specialists, Armand Hammer Foundation, Bye Bye Mattress, Central Coast Community Energy, County of Santa Barbara One Climate Initiative, Farmacy, Glass House Farms, LOACOM, Quantum Energy Squares, the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District, Bunnin Chevrolet, Lazy Acres and Will Hahn Productions. Media sponsors include KJEE, Edhat, Hope Ranch Living, Noozhawk, and Voice Magazine. Become a sponsor at sbearthday.org/sponsor. |