One million acts a year are taken by Earth Day Network planting over 1 million trees in 16 countries under the Avatar Home Tree Initiative. Locations where reforestation is most urgently needed include Haiti, Brazil, Mexico and urban areas of the US.

The Network is also bringing the voices of accomplished people to the Earth Day movement. Olympic and professional athletes are being called to the environmental movement in a campaign titled Athletes for the Earth™ which has a proven track record of connecting popular athletic activities with environmental stewardship.

The Network is also engaging women business, government and NGO leaders in its “Women and the Green Economy” (WAGE™) campaign. Their goal is to create a policy agenda for Rio+20 and to create national initiatives to promote the green economy.

200 entrepreneurs are also being convened to help solve climate change and create a new green economy.

The Earth Day Network is also at the forefront of the national green schools movement.

You can purchase the winning t-shirt from the environmental artistic Acts of Green contest, starting today. You can also download hundreds of free Earth Day themed songs from the Earth Day Network’s website.

Let’s all dedicate ourselves to helping save our planet in the next year by doing green acts and investments.

This being the Friday File, we ask “where’s the fun?”. How about the following activities, suggested by Green Living and National Green Week,  which can involve children and/or adults.

Use fun, kid-friendly containers for snacks and lunches instead of plastic baggies and juice boxes (In 2010, National Green Week participants eliminated 300,000 pounds of trash by packaging their snacks more sustainably, Green Living reports).

Grow your own garden to encourage an enjoyment of fresh veggies and fruit.

Play Energy Pictionary – Draw chosen energy words and let your friends guess what you’ve drawn.

Create a Candyland style board game based on renewable and nonrenewable energy sources, energy saving tips, and energy wasting habits.

Create reminder plates to be hung by light switches and thermostats in your home or classroom – if you want templates, National Green Week has them on its website.

Reuse a variety of paper products to create a collage with an environmental theme.

Create your own solar energy jar to observe how the sun’s heat can be captured and used to make solar tea.

There are a few other activities on National Green Week’s website, so check it out and Enjoy!

Each of the one million trees to be planted will be added to Earth Day Network’s Billion Acts of Green program as well as pledged towards the UN Environmental Program Billion Tree Campaign, a worldwide tree planting initiative by the UN Environment Programme.  Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will insert a unique code inside the Avatar Blu-ray/DVD which lets fans adopt one of the one million trees being planted.

Tree Canada will work to reforest almost 2,000 acres of pine forest in southeastern Manitoba that were destroyed by hurricane force winds in 2005.

In the UK, The Woodland Trust will provide free tree packs and online support to communities as part of their More Trees, More Good campaign.  The UK has only 4% native woodland cover, but the Woodland Trust suggests that at least twice as many native trees and woods are needed to maintain healthy populations of wildlife and people, and to combat climate change and improve the environment.  Clive Anderson, Sean Bean, and Barry Davison are among the British celebrities who are supporting this program.

In the United States, the tree planting will be sponsored by three organizations.  MillionTreesNYC in New York focuses on increasing green spaces and the urban health environment for low to middle income neighborhoods.  In San Franciso, Friends of the Urban Forest help citizens plant and care for street trees and sidewalk gardens, particularly in low income areas.  And in Los Angeles, TreePeople improves city life by planting trees, including fruit trees which will provide a free source of fruit to help low-income citizens eat healthier.

For information about the other 12 countries involved in the Avatar Home Tree Initiative, see Earth Day Network’s press release.

Meanwhile, the three day World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of the Mother Earth wrapped up in Cochabamba Bolivia.  This conference largely grew out of how so many NGO’s were barred from any official dialogue at Copenhagen.  Over 30,000 people participated in Bolivia and the conference resulted in a wide recognition that a world referendum is needed on climate change, a climate justice tribunal, and the protection of the rights of Mother Earth.  Several people blogged about the conference.   Hopefully they will accomplish an agreement at the summit planned to be held in Mexico later this year.  Their bottom line is that they want to establish a legal framework for protecting our increasingly threatened natural environment and raising the global consciousness about Mother Earth, on which we all depend for life.

Now that so many people are on board, what are some of the things we can do going forward?  This being the Friday File, what’s fun?

Sustainability can be fun if we take the right attitude to it.  My current stainless steel travel mug is decorated with zebra stripes with a pink border, and I love using it.  Look at lists of things we can do, such as on Earth Day’s website, and make a fun version of it.

If you’d like some inspiration, check out National Geographic’s website that shows some fun ways that Earth Day has been celebrated over the years.

And sometimes activities can be fun just because we’re helping our home planet and making a difference.

Let’s celebrate our fabulous home planet today, as well as pledge that we will help make a positive difference in the next year.  Read the last paragraph in my blog entry below (”Earth Days”) if you want some inspiration!

If you’d like to send your friends an Earth Day e-card, check out World Wildlife Fund US which has a small but nice selection on their website. 

It is rather poignant to celebrate our planet on the same day as reading Newsweek’s 100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear.   It’s an inventory of some of our world’s most beautiful places and a reminder that if we let climate change continue we will lose these places.

As Stewart Brand says in Earth Days, we all have a unique opportunity to make a contribution that will last for eons after we’ve passed on.   And if we all do something, then we will be able to save the 5,966 endangered species, feed the one billion people who are hungry, and stop storms and weather problems from destroying lives and areas on our planet.

What are you going to do for the Earth this year?