To celebrate 40 years of educating the public on ways to live a greener, more sustainable life, the Ecology Action Center is sharing 40 daily green ideas through their website, Facebook and Twitter.

The green ideas range from recycling, drinking fair trade coffee, taking a “staycation” versus a vacation, keeping a refrigerator energy efficient and getting exercise doing useful work for the community and not in an energy-intensive gym.

Michael Brown, executive director of the Ecology Action Center, explained the green ideas coincide with their mission to help educate and inspire people to live greener lives.

“We will be covering lots of topics in the green ideas for people to use and we invite everyone to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and on our website,” Brown said.

With a few hundred members, Brown said there have been both highlights and challenges the Ecology Action Center has experienced over 40 years.

“I’ve been at the EAC for about three and a half years and have heard great stories about the founders of the center. There have been reoccurring themes over the years, such as the great support we receive from the community,” Brown said.

The Ecology Action Center began in 1971 when recycling was not popular at the time, he explained.

“A group came together in the community to recycle and what was once just a one-time drive became a long-lasting effort. This says a lot about our community and their efforts to provide strong support to our missions,” Brown said.

While there have been many triumphs at the center, like with any non-profit organization, there have been challenges.

“Funding and growing to meet our community’s needs have been challenges we’ve faced over the years. This can be said about any non-profit group. With the current economic problems, having enough resources have been a challenge,” he said.  

Kris Hall, assistant director of the Ecology Action Center, said even at the start of the center’s involvement in the community, people have been interested in learning what they can do to live more sustainable lives.

“Over the 40 years, it’s been amazing, the growth and change we’ve seen. During the first Earth Day, many people in America weren’t connected with issues of recycling, but the community here in Bloomington-Normal was interested and there were many volunteers,” Hall said.

“We receive calls from people who are wanting to recycle anything they can and while not everything can be recycled, it’s wonderful that the community has been interested in doing anything they can,” she added.

The Ecology Action Center is celebrating Earth Day on April 22 at the Children’s Discovery Museum in Uptown and will also be having events dedicated to recycling and highlighting yards in the area that do not use harmful chemicals over the summer.

The daily Green Ideas can be found at ecologyactioncenter.org, on Facebook at  facebook.com/EcologyActionCenter and on Twitter at twitter.com/ecoactioncenter.