Today is the 41st anniversary of the first Earth Day, an occasion for people to celebrate and raise awareness of the natural world.

With news of melting glaciers, increasingly severe droughts, floods, and storms and rising ocean levels, Earth Day celebrants around the world are marking the anniversary with new calls to combat global warming and to protect our threatened environment.

Most people around the world celebrate Earth Day by participating in a beach clean-up, planting trees or enjoying a festival. But how much do you know about this important holiday? Here are some things you should know about Earth Day.

• By recycling one soda can – enough energy is saved to watch T.V. for three hours or produce a half-gallon of gasoline.
• Only 27 percent of American newspapers are recycled. If everyone recycled their papers, 250,000,000 trees would be saved each year.
• Everyday 20,000,000 Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped in foil – which equals about 133 square miles of tin foil. This incredible amount of foil is recyclable, but most people are unaware of this.
• The garbage in landfills can stay for over 30 years.
• Plastic bags and bottles are especially damaging to the environment, taking thousands of years to decompose. Plastic waste, polluting the oceans, has collected in the Pacific Garbage Patch and other floating gyres around the world.
• The latest Harris Poll on green behavior in America found that most people have done something that is green, by recycling a computer or cell phone. Switching to tap water from bottled, or made their home more energy efficient in some way.

As a father, Clay Aiken is probably aware of how important it is to take care of our planet for our kids. Here are a few suggestions for Clay to help his son grow up to respect the world:

• Help Parker plant a flower, or even better a vegetable plant. This is great because it helps kids understand that vegetables don’t originally come from the grocery story but from the Earth.
• Take Parker on an outing to a local farm or orchard.
• Teach him to conserve water and electricity whenever possible. Examples: turning off water when brushing teeth, turning off lights when leaving a room.
• Even young kids can help sort items for recycling. Young children usually like sorting games and recycling can put their sorting skills to good use.

Have you any suggestions to help young children learn to take care of our world?