In these times of quarantine and social distancing, it can be tough to fill all the hours in your day. Climate champions who are used to participating in rallies and tree-planting campaigns may find the moratorium on public gatherings especially challenging as they do their best to stay sustainable at home.

To help combat cabin fever and keep you in touch with climate issues, biodiversity, and the world’s natural beauty, the C4C team has compiled a Film4Climate list of eco-friendly films and TV recommendations that you can stream at home!

Did you know Disney+ offers documentaries? We recommend: Into the Okavango, Before the Flood, Oceans, Penguins and America’s National Parks. Many of Disney’s kid-friendly feature films also include climate-positive messages. Try Brother Bear, Wall-E, Finding Nemo or Moana for your next family movie night.

If you’re looking to get your Netflix fix, they’re offering some eye-popping docs as well, including Chasing Coral, Terra, A Plastic Ocean, Cowspiracy, and Mission Blue. If you want something binge-worthy, try the stunning nature series Our Planet and Night on Earth. If you’d like a more allegorical take on the damage to our environment, check out Okja, a moving 2017 film from Korean director Bong Joon-Ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer). Down to Earth With Zac Efron is another option if you're looking for a series that will motivate you to take climate action while avoiding doom-and-gloom negativity.

Maybe you’re more into YouTube. As you might expect, options abound here. Feature film-wise, you’ve got beautiful contemporary options like Leave No Trace and Wild as well as classics like Hayao Miyakazi’s Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. YouTube is also the place to find a lot of serialized content, from TED Talks on climate change to web series like Climate Countdown, Antarctic Extremes, and Years of Living Dangerously. For assorted shorter-form climate content, consider giving our very own Connect4Climate channel a gander!

If you’re thinking about saying hello to Hulu, I Am Greta, featuring #Fridays4Future leader Greta Thunberg, is streaming there now! Hulu’s also the home of the whimsical Woman at War and the climate-colored disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow. On HBO, we recommend An Apology to Elephants and Ice on Fire.

On top of all of the above? Amazon’s got a cornucopia of climate content too. From documentaries like Al Gore’s famous An Inconvenient Truth (and its sequel), the music-driven 1.5 Stay Alive, and Luc Jaquet’s Antarctica: Ice and Sky to dramatic offerings like the legal thriller Dark Waters, the old-school sci-fi Silent Running, and the fantastical adventure Beasts of the Southern Wild, it’s safe to say this platform’s got something for everyone. This Changes Everything offers a community-focused look at the economics of climate change and climate action, Tomorrow provides a positive perspective on how we can remake our world for the better, and The Human Element takes an intimate look at climate impacts in Middle America. You can find Years of Living Dangerously, a Connect4Climate collaboration, on Amazon too!

Last but not least, we encourage you to survey the online cinematic offerings of the D.C. Environmental Film Festival, as well as those of Films for the Earth and PBS. And if you happen to live in Mexico City, our partners at Ecocinema are bringing complimentary watch-from-your-window screenings to different parts of town!

Have fun, stay safe, stay sustainable, and stay climate-conscious! Let’s weather this storm together and come out the other side ready to stand up for our planet.

This Earth Week, we invited the members of our online community to contribute lines to a growing collective poem on the concept of #EarthRise. Celebrated writer and youth advocate Nadira Hira expertly arranged the responses into the poem below, a fitting conclusion to an invigorating Earth Week and a beautiful tribute to collective action for the planet.

Enjoy!

#EarthRise

Like the moon every night,

as the tides of the oceans move, 

youth arise, the Earth awakens—

shall we let go of our blindness, and see?

Waste killing the world,

as forests fall and glaciers melt

on mountains grand.

We cannot continue to incinerate our home.

All we need is the beauty of this place,

freedom to love our planet.

If we listen, we can understand—

we can hear it in water, in wood, and even in stone.

From Earth we grow;

its marvelous design

can heal all wounds.

My mother, my heart,

who sacrifices everything,

I would work for a sustainable planet—

trans-generational sustainability,

renewable energy that will change the whole system of our lives,

a new and clean Earth

healing from its ecological disguise.

Listen to the Earth’s plea,

together as one—

what a world we live in!

A living being,

a home for all—

take care of her.

Earth is calling,

we must respond—

I can, you can, they can,

our generation and more to come.

It’s time to build.

Slow is fast and fast is smooth:

Sit still. Observe. Rest. Admire and revere.

Help each other,

because unity gives us power and diversity gives us strength.

We can write our story on a new page,

the dawn of a new era, looking into the future

with new appreciation.

Someday we’ll touch Mars,

saying that was the moment, that was the start.

We share today for tomorrow’s children—

may every sunset bring us closer to a better sunrise.

#EarthRise.

 

[video:https://youtu.be/UMrYNssGjBk]

It’s the 50th anniversary of Earth Day this week, and all over the world the climate community is coming together virtually around the importance of creating a safe and sustainable future for everyone. There are lots of ways to get involved while #StayingHome—so many, in fact, that we’ve made an Earth Week Bingo card to help you keep track!

 

The centerpiece of the week will be Earth Day Live, an all-day stream put on by the Earth Day Network on April 22 featuring messages, performances and calls to action from #Youth4Climate activists like Licypriya Kangujam, political figures like John Kerry and Al Gore, musicians like Nahko, and celebrity climate advocates like Zac Efron. Sign up now to get email updates as Earth Day draws closer!

 

 

On Wednesday, we’ll also be rolling out a special #C4CLive interview on Instagram with a representative from the Mama Initiative, a group of young musicians who promote solidarity and #ClimateAction through beautiful original music and covers. Stay tuned throughout the week for our series of “Earth Day 2020 in :20” videos, in which climate advocates have 20 seconds to describe what their Earth Day action is. We invite you to share  your own Earth Day actions—just remember that you only have 20 seconds to tell us about them! When you post your video, be sure to tag @Connect4Climate and #EarthRise.

 

Even beyond the video content, we’ll have plenty to keep you engaged and entertained this Earth Week! Our #SustainabilityHacks #AtHome series offers tips on staying sustainable amid COVID quarantine measures, while the Earth Rise Collective Poem challenge asks our global community to contribute their vision for our planet’s recovery by telling us what #EarthRise means to each of them. In our #ClimateQuiz series, we just launched our first C4C crossword puzzle and we’ll be ending this week with a set of Earth Week-inspired emoji puzzles.

 

 

Many of our partners have big plans of their own, including Fashion Revolution Week (all week), Fashinnovation (Apr. 20-21), We Don’t Have Time (Apr. 20-25), Stand Up for Climate Comedy Night (Apr. 22), Greta Thunberg’s Talks for Future (Apr. 24), the UNDP’s Mission 1.5 (all week), and our aforementioned friends at the Mama Initiative (all week).  You can also become a citizen scientist by downloading the Earth Challenge 2020 app and inputting data about the air quality and plastic pollution in your community.

 

All of these activities represent a tiny fraction of the climate engagement you can expect to see across every corner of the internet this week. We encourage you to add your perspectives and ideas to the conversation, and above all to have a safe, sustainable, and inspirational Earth Week.

Looking to test your climate knowledge while quarantined at home? We've got just the ticket: C4C's very own climate-themed crossword puzzle series!

We hope you'll find Connect4Climate crosswords fun and challenging in equal measure. New puzzles will be added to this article as they come out so you can easily access new grids as they appear (or revisit older ones). Our latest is themed around World Environment Day and biodiversity—check it out!

If you follow the link to our latest puzzle (just click the title or the URL beneath the grid), you'll be able to fill and Submit it right in your browser window. You'll be asked to provide your name and email when you Submit—this is so we can congratulate you if you win! You might also include a Twitter or Instagram handle in parentheses so we can properly tag you on social media.

Need to take a break? Just press the Save button before exiting—your progress will be preserved when you reopen the link. Need confirmation that a word is right? Try the Check button!

We'll announce the winning Crossword #2 submissions the weekend of Friday, June 5 (World Environment Day), so you've got plenty of time to mull it over. Best of luck!

Connect4Climate Crossword #2

Solve and submit here: http://crossword.info/ryanpsmith/Connect4ClimateCrossword2

Connect4Climate Crossword #1

Solve and submit here: https://bit.ly/C4CCrossword1

Banner image courtesy of Steve Buissinne, Pixabay.

We at Connect4Climate thrive on the camaraderie of our team, so living under coronavirus quarantine measures has been a major challenge for us all. Still, we’ve found creative ways to stay connected, both with one another and with the climate action community worldwide, and discovered unique strategies to keep our morale and motivation up during these uncertain times. We hope you find some comfort and kinship in our stories; feel free to share your own experience with us on Twitter or Instagram!

 

What follows are small glimpses into the lives of some of the members of our global C4C squad, including our social media specialists, Jenni Philp (Edinburgh, Scotland), Dany Oliveira (Bangkok, Thailand) and Ryan Smith (Washington, DC); our partners team, Sarah Daggett (Silver Spring, Maryland), Bárbara Simões (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Inês Araújo (Moledo do Minho, Portugal); our communications consultants, Max Bartoli (Veracruz, Mexico), Max Falcone (Rome, Italy) and Roberto Razeto (Milan, Italy); our multimedia content lead, Kaia Rose (Washington, DC); our photographer, Leigh Vogel (Marble, Colorado); our graphic designer, Dani Martinez (Malaga, Spain); our senior advisor, Francis Dobbs (Alexandria, Virginia); and (last but certainly not least) our program manager, Giulia Braga (Milan, Italy).

 

How We’re Staying Safe

 

For starters, all of us are #stayinghome as much as possible and following the WHO (and, where applicable, CDC) guidelines on social distancing and hand washing. Francis summarizes his routine as “washing, wiping and waiting,” while Giulia has turned to housework (“perhaps too often!”) to keep her mind busy. Dany is tracking all the latest news and is adhering to Bangkok’s curfew.

 

Kaia washes her hands thoroughly to twenty seconds of “I Want to Wash My Hands” (modified from the Beatles classic) whenever she’s at the sink, while Ryan and his roommates regularly disinfect communal surfaces like the dining room table.

 

Sarah has dedicated her time not just to keeping herself safe, but her extended family as well, making dozens of cloth face masks for loved ones working in healthcare. She’s created nearly 100 so far, upcycling materials like bedsheets and old baby blankets. Max Bartoli is following her example, striving to create ten masks a day from cotton t-shirts.

 

Jenni has been taking care to sanitize her phone (where germs are apt to collect) and is delivering groceries to her grandparents while maintaining a safe distance from others. Inês says it’s been tough for her own workaholic relatives to confine themselves to their rooms but that she’s been making sure they comply.

 

Bárbara finds it helpful to remind herself of the end goal of self-isolation. “If we all manage to stick with it,” she says, “we have all done our part.”

 

One of Sarah's many homemade masks.

 

How We’re Staying Sustainable

 

Leigh, a vegan, is experimenting with new recipes and sharing her culinary advice for others online. Max Falcone is ramping up his own vegetarian cooking efforts and is working to build an online network committed to the idea of a “Sustainable Renaissance” in the wake of the COVID crisis.

 

Max Bartoli is calibrating his thermostat to reduce energy consumption and is looking to invest in window-mounted solar panels. Sarah is getting her son in on sustainability with homemade play dough, cloth diapers, and toys crafted from household items. Roberto is using this opportunity to homeschool his children on the importance of sustainability.

 

Jenni and her dad are building an “at-home-gym” with textbooks and bags of flour for weights, while Dany is seeing if he can replace plastic trash bags with old newspapers. Kaia is making her own cleaning solutions and carefully composting her organic waste.

 

Inês, for her part, has long been an expert at working from home and by now has her sustainability routine—bamboo toothbrush, refillable glass bottle, recycling, even homegrown veggies and chickens—down to a fine science. Francis is planting herbs and veggies too.

A glimpse at Inês's vegetable garden.

How We’re Staying Upbeat

 

Ryan has been constructing crossword puzzles and playing video games alongside college friends online. He was delighted to learn that Giulia and her brother are getting into gaming as well.

 

Max Falcone has been finishing books in his reading backlog and doing some writing of his own, while Kaia and her brother (who’s in NYC) have been slowly but surely covering gaps in their knowledge of world cinema by watching films simultaneously and calling each other afterwards to discuss. (Kaia’s also documenting the #stayhome exploits of an intrepid Lego adventurer.) Francis and his family are sampling classic comedies. Sarah is finding mental wellness through meditation and sewing.

 

Leigh, in addition to studying French and German, is using her talents with photography to document the changes to our world—small and great—brought on by the quarantine. Dany’s keeping positive with a motivational David Goggin audiobook.

 

Jenni is transporting herself with the magic of piano, which she’s relearning after a while away from the keys. For Max Bartoli, uplift comes from a healthy mix of kung fu, yoga, Netflix and HBO.

 

And Bárbara has provided a home for the world’s cutest cat, Milan!

Bárbara's new feline friend is the perfect quarantine companion.

 

 

How We’re Staying Connected

 

Our team was built on the principle of connection (it’s right there in the name!), so we’re all doing our very best to stay in touch with one another and with our friends, followers, and fellow climate advocates amid these challenging times.

 

We’ve all been doing a lot of videoconferencing, texting, and posting lately, of course, and we all keep track of the news (while taking care not to let it overwhelm us). But that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

 

Roberto has taken to organizing virtual dinners with friends and family. Jenni’s been participating in massive “pub trivia” sessions on Zoom with upwards of 60 teams, and Ryan speed-solved crosswords in a tourney with over 1600 competitors.

 

Max Falcone has been hosting multidisciplinary discussion groups online, assessing the situation intellectually while engaging with friends and colleagues in the process.

 

Our whole team came together over WhatsApp to celebrate the birth of Dani’s daughter, Gabriela. Congratulations, Dani!

 

And on the job, of course, we’ve been doing our best to ramp up our social media presence for you, our climate-conscious readers and supporters! Stay tuned for fun upcoming features like #SustainabilityHacks and climate-themed emoji puzzles, and don’t be shy to share your own experiences with us via tags or direct messages. We’d love to hear your stories.

 

A small selection of our worldwide #AtHome workstations.

A year ago today we lost our dear friend and colleague Max Thabiso Edkins when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 went down shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa.

Max was the quintessential climate change warrior. He was passionately committed to the cause, he knew the science, and he was a very talented and skilled communicator. He reached out to and inspired a huge range of stakeholders with his green bow tie and his special articulate messaging and his innovative events.  And he mentored and developed a large number of young people in the field. No one who met Max ever easily forgot him – such was the impression he made.

He was also a wonderful and loyal friend and a loving father and husband.

He is missed every day, but even though physically no longer with us, he continues to inspire us.

And we will continue the fight in honor of his memory.

 

Remembering Max from Connect4Climate on Vimeo.

Every March, the D.C. Environmental Film Festival brings tens of thousands of filmgoers together in the U.S. capital for a celebration of both cinema and the planet we all call home. Mirroring the mission of C4C’s Film4Climate initiative, the DCEFF not only shares moving stories on the environment but promotes concrete action to help the planet, “inspiring understanding and stewardship… through the power of film.”

 

This year, the festival is presenting two Connect4Climate-supported productions: Slater Jewell-Kemker’s new cut of her climate action documentary Youth Unstoppable and Jared P. Scott’s trans-African environmental odyssey The Great Green Wall. Youth Unstoppable will be screened on March 15 at 7:00 PM EDT at the Carnegie Institution for Science and on March 19 at the same time at American University; The Great Green Wall will be presented at the Carnegie Institution on March 14 at 7:00 PM. The first Youth Unstoppable screening and the Great Green Wall screening will be followed by moderated discussions with the films’ respective directors.

 

Youth Unstoppable is a vivid on-the-ground account of the burgeoning worldwide Youth4Climate movement. Fastidiously compiled across an eleven-year span by Slater Jewell-Kemker, a youth climate activist in her own right who embarked on this ambitious project when she was just fifteen years old, the film speaks to the power of young people to seize control of their own futures and band together to push for sustainable policy as well as everyday lifestyle changes.

 

Get your Youth Unstoppable tickets BELOW or at https://bit.ly/3a8FF3U 

 

 

The Great Green Wall, executive produced by Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles, follows the journey of Malian music icon Inna Modja as she travels east to west across the Sahel region of Africa. Modja connects with those she meets along the way through song, and learns of the importance—both practical and symbolic—of the titular Great Great Wall campaign, an ambitious tree-planting movement aiming to create a wall of solid green across the heart of the continent. The film is produced by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) with the support of Connect4Climate and partners.

 

  Get your FREE Great Green Wall tickets BELOW or at https://bit.ly/3a8FF3U 

 

 

These two films embody Film4Climate’s commitment to communicating the urgent need for united climate action through the arts. Youth Unstoppable and The Great Green Wall offer poignant, humane perspectives on those directly impacted by climate change and challenge viewers to act themselves in the planet’s defense.

 

We hope you will join us for these screenings in Washington, D.C. next month.

 

 

Youth Unstoppable tickets

 

Great Green Wall FREE tickets

 

 

Banner/thumbnail image courtesy of Pixabay photographer Skeeze. 

Twice a year every year, the trade fair known as MICAM Milano showcases the latest in high-fashion footwear, featuring more than 1,700 collections across a sprawling 60,000-square meter exhibition space. For this year’s winter edition, MICAM Milano was kind enough to invite Connect4Climate’s #YouthTakeover initiative and the X-Ray Fashion VR installation to the show to spread the vital message of sustainability in the fashion sector.

Created by MANND and directed by leading fashion photographer Francesco Carrozzini, X-Ray Fashion offers participants an immersive VR narrative on the inner workings of the “fast fashion” industry, laying bare its wastefulness and history of environmental damage as well as its alarming health impacts on textile workers worldwide. Co-produced by Connect4Climate and Vulcan Productions with support from Alcantara, X-Ray Fashion is an eye-opening call to action urging fashion houses to prioritize sustainability in design and consumers to be smart about their spending and support the planet with their purchasing power.

On February 16 and 17, MICAM Milano attendees were invited to experience X-Ray Fashion while a group of students from Milan’s prestigious IULM communications school conducted a #YouthTakeover across Connect4Climate’s social media channels, reporting out on the guests’ reactions to XRF and sustainable fashion as a whole as well as their own. This is the latest such takeover in an ongoing series spanning events including COP25, Innovate4Climate, and Asia-Pacifc Climate Week.

We at C4C congratulate the #YouthTakeover team from IULM on a job well done! We look forward to continuing to give youth leaders around the world a chance to flex their communication skills in the #ClimateAction-packed months to come.

Banner image courtesy of Dimitris Vetsikas, Pixabay. All other photos by the Connect4Climate Team.

Kids aren’t often given enough credit. Although people are quick to point out the youngest generation’s faults, many of them deeply care about big issues such as equality and water conservation.

And if they don’t currently seem to care, their viewpoints can be shaped by what we do as the adult influences in their lives. Here are 25 ways to encourage them to save water.

                                                                     

25 Ways to Help Children Save Water

1. Don’t underestimate them: They can handle hearing about scary topics such as water scarcity.
2. Make it a game: See who can take the fastest shower.
3. Show them other kids making a difference: Greta Thunberg might be a big inspiration to them.
4. Have them reuse towels: Reusing towels in your household might seem like a small act. But cutting down on one load of laundry a week can save 30 to 40 gallons of water.
5. Lead by example: Show them you care and they’ll likely follow suit.
6. Turn off the faucet when brushing teeth: That can save gallons of water over the course of a week, and it’s one of the most painless ways to conserve.
7. Ask them to notify you if they notice a way to improve: Open the lines of communication -- they might have some great ideas.
8. Teach them baths use more water than showers: You both can save the baths for special occasions. Opt for showers most of the time instead.
9. Report leaks and drips as soon as possible: That will allow you to repair them in a timely fashion. Your child may want to watch you repair the leak too, so they can learn a new skill.
10. Have them be responsible for keeping a pitcher of water in the refrigerator at all times: That pitcher of water will always be cold, cutting down on the time you run the sink waiting for a cold glass of water.
11. Teach them to scrape rather than rinse dishes: There is no need to rinse the dishes before placing them in the dishwasher.
12. Teach them to recycle: Recycling saves a lot of water usage. Make it a high priority for your children.
13. Buy them a reusable water bottle: Remind them that every time they carry this with them instead of using a disposable water bottle, they are saving water. Plastic production takes a lot of water.
14. Ask them to be a good example for their younger sibling: Kids want to be someone to look up to. And if they know little eyes are watching them, they’ll double up on their efforts.
15. Have them save energy too: Kids don’t always make the link between saving energy and water. Teach them to shut off the lights and television when they aren’t in use.
16. Show them some YouTube videos about conservation: Kids are drawn to the screen and sometimes those lessons sink in better than the ones we try to teach them.
17. Tell them they don’t always have to flush: It doesn’t hurt anything to not flush your toilet after a child pees in it. Teach them if it’s brown flush it down, if it’s yellow, let it mellow.
18. Have them draw a picture about water conservation: It might be of sad animals looking for water, or of a dry planet. Once they draw the picture, hang it somewhere you’ll all see it. It will become a source of motivation.
19. Take them to a lake: A place of beauty will often make children understand why they need to conserve water. Never underestimate the power of a pretty place. Remind them that saving water will protect that spot for future families to enjoy.                                                                                                                                                                                
20. Read a book: A book about the importance of water will help drive home why this issue is vital. A great pick is The Water Princess.
21. Let your child skip some showers: Unless your child is hardcore into playing outdoors or playing sports and they are always sweating, they don’t need a daily bath. Every other day is just fine.
22. Have a water cup designated for all-day use: Kids are notorious for taking one sip of water and then getting a new cup out next time they are thirsty. Have them use one cup all day for their water breaks.
23. Train them to use old water for indoor plants: They can use water leftover from cups around the house to water plants instead of dumping them down the drain.
24. Grow a vegetable garden: That cuts down on water usage for packaging and transporting vegetables to grocery stores. It’s a fun way to conserve water and teach children.
25. Try to lower the water meter usage: This is a tangible way to show your efforts are paying off. Let your children see how much water you’ve saved month to month. Use those monetary savings to do a fun family activity together as a reward.

Don’t Forget: A Little Adds Up

Remember to teach your child that no amount of water saved is insignificant. It can all add up to big savings over time. Together, your family can make a huge difference.

About the Author

                                                                 

Sylvia Jones is a freelance writer and mother of two from Indiana, USA. Sylvia is passionate about water conservation, the environment, and lowering her carbon footprint.

Preview thumbnail courtesy of tookapic (Pixabay). Banner image courtesy of Katja Just (Pixabay). Body images courtesy of, respectively, Alina Kuptsova and jplenio (Pixabay).