GET INVOLVED WITH EARTH DAY 2023
22 April, 2023
Have a rubbish day, week or month!
The theme of this year’s Earth Day is ‘invest in our planet’. During April, could you inspire your friends and family to sponsor you or buy something from you to raise funds for a Bin Twin or two?
Here are some ideas for how you could mark Earth Day this year!
- Bake for bins! Use our eco recipes booklet as inspiration for a Big Bin Coffee Morning with friends. As part of your get together you could all bring pre-loved clothing and have a clothes swap!
- Go car-free for a week! Walk or cycle everywhere from 17-22 April – with all the money you save on fuel being converted into £45 bin twins!
- Spin for the Bin! Challenge yourself to cycle 90 miles during 17-22 April with the aim of raising £90 for two Bin Twins!
- Be a model citizen! If you have children, take part in our junk modelling competition as a family
- Clothes swap! The clothing industry produces 150 billion garments a year and 87% (40 million tons) end up in landfill. Ask friends and family to dig out pre-loved items that you haven’t worn for at least six months, and hold a clothes swap.
If you donate the funds you raise between 17-22 April, they’ll register on our Earth Day twinning totaliser that will be on our website all the way to midnight on Saturday, 22 April.
Spin for the Bin!
Challenge yourself to cycle 90 miles during 17-22 April with the aim of raising £90 for two Bin Twins!
Set up a JustGiving page for your Spin for the Bin challenge and start fundraising.
Bake for Bins!
Everything we eat has a carbon footprint. CO2 emissions from food make up around one-quarter of all the world’s emissions – as greenhouse gas emissions are produced by growing, rearing, farming, processing, transporting, storing, cooking, and then wasting, food.
– Use our eco recipes booklet as inspiration for a Big Bin Coffee Morning with friends.
You could have a Big Bin Bake Sale (or a Guess The Weight of the Orange Peel Cake competition) as part of your get-together.
Junk modelling competition
Here’s a scrap heap challenge for your family!
Every day, tons of plastic waste are thrown into rivers and end up in the ocean.
So, create a junk model on the theme of ‘oceans’, send us a photo – and you could win yourself a Bin Twin for an inside or outside bin!
You’ll find competition details here
Walk for Waste
Go car-free for a week! Walk or cycle everywhere from 17-22 April – with all the money you save on fuel being converted into £45 bin twins!
OR – if that’s out of the question – could you organise a litter pick around your community with your friends and family. You could turn some of the waste you collect into a junk model (see opposite!)
Set up a JustGiving page to collect donations that can be converted into Bin Twins!
Why Earth Day is so important
Country spotlight: Democratic Republic of Congo
In December 2022, more than 100 people were killed in landslides and floods in DRC’s capital city of Kinshasa. They were the worst floods in years, and evidence of why Kinshasa’s plastic problem is deadly.
With no formal plastic waste collection in Kinshasa, people who live close to the river often throw their waste into it. The plastic stops the river from draining properly. In December 2022, some places saw two metres of flood water, filled with waste, reach up to people’s roofs.
Bin Twinning’s DRC partner runs a hub where waste pickers are paid by the kilo for plastic bags and bottles. This plastic is then sent to a factory where it is melted down and mixed with sand to become eco paving bricks.
‘Thanks to this work, we can send our children to school and they have food to eat. We can afford to go to hospital if we are sick. Some of us have even built houses,’ says François, the manager of a waste collection point.
Before mum-of-four Jeanne got a job in the brick-making factory, she was struggling to earn enough to feed her children once a day. Now, life is still difficult, but she can at least afford three meals a day, and her children go to school. And, she’s proud to have a job that is helping the local environment.
‘Here in Kinshasa, the waste is a big problem because people throw it wherever they want. With this job, we raise awareness about the flooding problems that are caused by plastic blocking the river. And we transform the plastic into useful things. It no longer brings disease but makes life better.’
Click to watch Jeanne tell the story of Bin Twinning’s work in Kinshasa, DRC.