Things you can do to improve climate change and the environment

Get involved and take part in the following ways.

Engage your workplace

Here are five ideas you can use and activities you can undertake at work to make a difference:

1. Encourage your colleagues to use reusable mugs rather than Styrofoam cups.
2. Launch a carpool campaign. You might find that you like carpooling!
3. Encourage your colleagues to bike to work.
4. Organize an environment day where you and your colleagues can improve your understanding of the environment and brainstorm ways to protect it.
5. Urge your employer or firms in your area to publicize the efforts they are making to protect the environment.

Bring your school outside

Getting involved is the first step towards effectively protecting our environment and our resources. Here are nine ideas you can use and activities you can undertake at school to make a difference:

1. Organize a clean-up day at a park, schoolyard, or beach, with the help of your school board. Keep a record of the litter collected, and launch a neighbourhood litter-prevention campaign.
2. Organize an environmental film festival. Contact the National Film Board of Canada for titles of films.
3. Hold a contest for the funniest story about the environment.
4. Organize skits in which participants explore the topic of the environment.
5. Urge your school board to undertake school projects on the environment.
6. Organize an exhibit on the environment.
7. Organize an environment day where you and your colleagues can improve your understanding of the environment and brainstorm ways to protect it.
8. Plan school trips to wastewater treatment plants, weather offices, or environmental firms.
9. Invite each class to conduct research in your area, and have them present a class report.

Join activities in your neighborhood

Here are 12 ideas you can use and activities you can undertake around your neighbourhood to make a difference:

1. Invite the social clubs to which you belong to make an official statement and to take practical steps to protect the environment.
2. Contact shopping centers and the main employers in your region, with your cycling friends, and suggest they install bicycle racks on their property.
3. Don’t throw old clothes away: someone less fortunate than you may be able to use them. Organize a clothing collection day in your neighbourhood, and give what you collect to a charity.
4. Contact recycling firms and invite them to launch an information session or to establish a waste stream collection project on your street or at the office.
5. Encourage scrap-metal dealers and second-hand stores by giving them old appliances and other goods you no longer use.
6. Take part in a tree planting campaign.
7. Organize a bazaar on your street or in your neighbourhood to raise funds for your local environmental group.
8. Make up your own quiz game on the environment, and get your friends and neighbours to play. Offer to play it on your community television station.
9. Organize a bicycle trip to environmentally important and historic sites in your area.
10. Organize an environmental film festival at a library, school, or theatre. Contact the Canadian National Film Board for titles of films.
11. Ask the editor of your weekly newspaper to publish an issue on the environment.
12. Organize a mini environmental fair.

Get involved in your municipality

Here are 10 ideas you can use and activities you can organize to engage your local municipalities to make a difference:

1. Ask your municipal council to hold an official kick-off for Canadian Environment Week.
2. Urge your municipality to hold a contest recognizing outstanding environmental initiatives.
3. Urge your municipality to hold a contest recognizing outstanding environmental initiatives.
4. Ask your municipal council to create bike paths in your city.
5. Organize an exhibit on the environment at your municipal library or community centre.
6. Ask your municipal library to buy more books and documents on Canada’s environment and natural heritage.
7. Urge your municipality to organize official public ceremonies associated with the environment. For example, if your municipality organizes a tree-planting campaign, get the mayor to kick off Canadian Environment Week in person by planting the first tree.
8. Invite local leaders, mayors, MPs, business executives, and environmental spokespersons to take part in your Canadian Environment Week activities.
9. Organize a display at your library to show natural history collections belonging to residents in your area.
10. Write a letter to the editor of your newspaper to express your commitment, and urge your fellow citizens to take action

Participate at home and with your family

Getting involved is the first step towards effectively protecting our environment and our resources. Here are five ideas you can use and activities you can organize to make a difference at home and with your families.

1. Explain to your children what Canadian Environment Week is, and show them ways to save energy such as switching off lights, turning off taps tightly, and recycling.
2. Encourage your friends and acquaintances to take concrete actions that will help conserve water. Tell them that placing a one-litre container filled with water in a toilet tank will save one litre of water each time the toilet is flushed.
3. Join an environmental organization.
4. Subscribe to a magazine on environmental protection, wildlife and plants, or outdoor activities.
5. Take your family or organize a group trip to a provincial or national park. Many of them are offering nature interpretation programs and special activities.