Every year on April 22, Earth Day is celebrated (庆祝) all over the world. It is a time to work towards keeping our earth clean. People plan projects to clean up the land, air and water.

U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson first thought of the idea for Earth Day in 1962 when he saw polluted rivers and cities covered with smoke. Senator Nelson needed to get support from Americans to clean up the earth. Finally, on April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans celebrated the first Earth Day! Now many countries around the world celebrate it, and so can you. How can you celebrate Earth Day? Here are a few ideas:

●Join a clean-up project-Clean up your street or a favorite beach.

●Save energy-Turn off the lights when you leave a room, and use public transportation.

● Use less water.

●Reduce (减少) / Reuse/ Recycle-Practice the three Rs: First, reduce how much you use. Then reuse or recycle what you can.

You can make a difference on Earth Day and every day!

Would you try food made of rubbish? When world leaders got together at the UN for a meeting on climate(气候) change, they had a special lunch. The food was made from something that most of us would throw away. There was a salad made of vegetable scraps(剩菜叶). The leaders also had hamburgers made of fruit left over from juicing.

The UN said this reminded people about food waste and the bad influence it has on climate change. “Food waste is not often noticed in climate change, and that is shameful when so many people are in hunger.” said a government secretary.

Most people don’t even realize how much food they throw away every day. Sometimes they cook too much or they don’t use it in time. Every year more than one-third of all food produced worldwide goes to waste, according to the UN. Stop the waste, and the whole world could save $300 billion from wasted food. More importantly, it could also do less harm to the environment.

Think about a bag of cheese(奶酪). Before we buy it at the store, people have to raise the cows, deal with the milk, and drive to the shop to sell the cheese. If you throw the cheese away, you have wasted energy, fuel(燃料) and water, which give out greenhouse gases that add to global warming.

The UN said if we stop throwing good food away, we could cut down up to 17 million tons of CO₂. The good of that would be the same as taking one in every four cars off the road.

In China, each year we produce about 150 million tons of city waste according to a report. Where does the waste go? People usually burn or bury (埋) it. On the other hand, we receive waste from some developed countries. We get useful materials from it. What about the useless part? Still burned or buried. But is it a proper way?

Waste pollutes the environment, harms people’s health and causes animals to die. It also gets in the way of green and sustainable development. We can’t make money at the cost of the environment; we should leave clean water and green mountains to our next generation (一代).

China is getting really serious about waste now.

We are taking less waste from developed countries. From January 2018, China started to stop 24 kinds of waste coming into our country. And more laws and rules about dealing with waste have been made. Anyone who breaks the law will be punished.

China also tries to put waste into good use. One example is the waste electricity factories. They burn waste to make electricity in a green way. No harmful gases (气) or water will get into the environment.

The Chinese government is encouraging people to do waste sorting (分类). Cities like Shanghai, Chongqing and Beijing have their own sorting systems. More will join them soon. As President Xi Jinping said during a visit to Shanghai, waste sorting is a new fashion (时尚). More and more people are forming the habit of separating their waste.