Join young people from around the country taking action for Earth Week on April 19-25!
About
Since Earth Day was founded in 1970, students have been on the forefront of change to protect our environment. Today, we face numerous environmental crises, from climate change, to air and water pollution, to the destruction of ecosystems critical to all life on Earth. That’s why we’re organizing events across the country to call for bold action to protect our environment and public health.
Youth Earth Week is a project of the Student PIRGs. For nearly 50 years we’ve helped students to get organized, mobilized and energized so they can continue to be on the cutting edge of positive change.
Resources
The Activist Toolkit
From recruitment to leadership development, to grassroots organizing, to working with the media, this Activist Toolkit provides the basic tools to run successful events and winning campaigns.
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Outreach Toolkit
Amplify your Earth Week events with social media tags, graphics, and sample posts; a sample recruitment email; and a sample “Register Your Event” email.
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Social Media Toolkit
Sample social media posts, hashtags, and graphics to amplify your Earth Week events.
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Media Toolkit
Sample media advisories, press statements, press releases and more to make sure your Earth Week event gets great media coverage!
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Letters-to-the-Editor Toolkit
Letters to the editor (LTEs) are a great way to get easy media coverage for your campaign. This toolkit contains a how to, tips and sample Earth Week LTEs to submit to your local or campus newspapers.
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From Data to Change: Brand Audit Toolkit
Since 2017, #breakfreefromplastic has been organizing brand audits to hold the top corporate plastic polluters accountable. This guide will help you maximize the impact from brand audit data and use it to create your own long-term campaigns to end plastic pollution.
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2025 Leadership Award Winners
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Earth Day Festival
Winner: Most Campaign Product
MASSPIRG at UMass Amherst partnered with New2U and UMass Sustain at the campus Earth Day farmers market where they collected over 400 actions on various campaigns including petitioning for the phasing out fluorescents light bulbs in favor of efficient LEDs and banning seeds coated with bee-killing pesticides, and selling fun thrifted clothing items for the Waste is Out of Fashion campaign. And they had a bike-powered smoothie machine!
The UMass Amherst chapter also held a “Whale of a Good Time” action station at the Save the Right Whales campaign. Students collected petitions and photo petitions with Walter the inflatable North Atlantic Right Whale and played lawn games. With a dozen volunteers, the chapter, led by incoming campus organizer Allison Olson, collected 272 petition signatures and 22 photo petitions calling for protections for right whales, helping the campaign hit 1,000 signatures and photo petitions for the year!
University of Califonia, San Diego
EarthFest “Polluters Pay”
Winner: Most Media Attention
CALPIRG at UC San Diego held an action station at EarthFest in Balboa Park for their “Make Polluters Pay” campaign, which is working to pass a bill to create a superfund that takes the burden off of the taxpayer and forces polluters to pay for the damages caused by natural disasters that have been amplified by climate change.
The chapter collected 325 petition signatures and chapter leader Chloe Banaag was interviewed by NBC 7 News and Daylight San Diego about the campaign. In total, the event generated four media hits!!
The Evergreen State College
”The Depressed Bee”
Winner: Most Creative Event
In response to the dwindling bee population on campus and lack of native wildflowers, WashPIRG student leader Sabrina Thiruvathukal dressed as a “depressed bee” and shared a sob story (“pesticides killed all my relatives!”) along with educational information about the importance of bees and how we can save them.
About 40 people took a photo-petition to support the campaign – an impressive number of actions for Evergreen’s small campus and one of their most successful events of the year! Participants included the college’s Dean of Students, two campus police officers, and the Assistant Director for the Center for Climate Action and Sustainability on campus.
Partners:
