Green Brief: Earth Day starts at home

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 15, 2026

“Our Power, Our Planet” is the theme for Earth Day 2026, just as it was in 2025, reinforcing the important role individuals and communities play in speeding the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and securing environmental progress.

The theme calls for tripling global clean energy by 2030, emphasizing local action involving solar, wind and geothermal energy, along with civic engagement.

Now that wind and solar energy cost less than fossil fuel energy and carry far fewer negative environmental impacts, the earthday.org campaign aims to strengthen energy security, boost economic resilience and improve public health by supporting green infrastructure.

The 2026 theme focuses on organizing, protecting environmental laws and using local action to drive change, ensuring environmental progress remains resilient regardless of political shifts.

The campaign empowers individuals to respond through activism, voting, reducing personal footprints at home and at work, participating in local community projects, reducing consumption, cutting down on plastic use and urging leaders to support policies that promote renewable energy and environmental protection.

By the end of 2025, Vashon-Maury Island generated 6% of its electricity use through island solar production, doubling that proportion in five years. So we need to pick up the pace to meet an islandwide tripling goal by 2030. And Eric Walker discovered that VMI electric vehicle registrations now number nearly 1,200, doubling in fewer than four years.

How about making every day Earth Day? Real change comes when everyone consistently takes small actions. What actions, you ask? Earthday.org provides a list of 50 ways you can make a difference, and if you share your green acts with friends and family, you can further inspire the VMI community.

We have so many VMI green actions to celebrate this year, and so many opportunities to get involved. The Vashon Beach Tire Brigades, led by Vashon Rotary and Zero Waste Vashon, have grown with new neighborhoods and the Harbor School, already removing several dozen toxic beach tires from our fragile shores this spring. Their goal is to top last year’s removal of 127 tires from Vashon’s 52 miles of shoreline, and they need your help mapping them at low tide.

The VMI Land Trust continues its admirable forest stewardship and conservation work, acquiring and preserving forested parcels and repairing island stream health.

The Vashon Nature Center educates island youth and collects valuable data to improve our streams, beaches and habitats through more than 50 partnerships and joint Salish Sea programs, including an international biodiversity project and Puget Sound-wide monitoring efforts.

A new initiative, Regenerate Vashon, one of the nine local landscapes of Regenerate Cascadia, is getting started under the leadership of Megan Stachura and is focused on the bioregion’s health and repair. The project hopes to continue the rich legacy of the Whole Vashon Project. Stay tuned for monthly meeting announcements at the Vashon Land Trust building.

The VMI circular economy is growing stronger through its eight libraries and Fix-It Cafe. ZWV Vashon Dish Library, formerly known as the No Trash Bash Stash, is growing in its new location at the Episcopal Church. Why not make future get-togethers zero waste by using the Vashon Dish Library? These all-volunteer efforts need librarians, so let us know if you are interested in helping at dishlibrary@zerowastevashon.org.

The six-month ZWV reused building material facility feasibility project, funded by the King County Solid Waste Re+ seed program, is well underway. We can definitely use volunteers for quantification, communications and the late-April collection event. Contact info@zerowastevashon.org.

The ZWV Choose Plastic Free campaign, led by Celia Congdon and her team of dedicated activists, is making great progress by hosting periodic meetups at the Vashon Land Trust building, screening films and bringing in expert speakers to discuss the impact of plastics on human health. It is great to see all the bring-your-own-mug advocates at our local coffee shops. Don’t forget to BYOM.

We also have a new island initiative led by Jen and Rocky Hrachovec focused on the state of Quartermaster Harbor water quality and how to improve it. High nitrogen levels, low dissolved oxygen and pollutants create havoc for the ecosystem, and one idea is to use oysters and other shellfish to help clean up Quartermaster Harbor while also sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. I would not advise eating the shellfish until the harbor’s water and sediment quality improve, however, and the shellfish would have to be properly handled.

The Vashon-Maury Climate Action Planning team, led by Kevin Jones, is working with island organizations and individuals to determine their highest-priority climate action interests and how they intersect with the new 2025 King County Strategic Climate Action Plan. Stay tuned for more developments.

The King County Solid Waste Division continues its Vashon Island compost expansion work approved in 2023, although it sadly announced a one-year delay in the project. Completion is now planned for October 2031, unless islanders are able to communicate a sense of urgency and request that the project be fast-tracked and given a higher priority.

So let’s all continue working to make VMI a model green community by contributing to these and other efforts and exercising “Our Power, Our Planet.” As always, thank you for sharing your ideas and feedback.

Steve Bergman is a geologist, Zero Waste Vashon and Vashon Makerspace board member and Whole Vashon Project advisor.