The Earth is a beautiful place, and Sooke community groups are aiming to celebrate it.

On Earth Day, April 22, a festival celebration will be held at the Sooke Community Hall, hosted by Transition Sooke, the Sooke Fall Fair Association and Creatively United for the Planet Society.

The event will include an exhibition, eco-friendly vendors, family activities, an up cycled fashion show, an evening dance, zero-waste food trucks, and live music.

Prior to the event, Transition Sooke Society will be hosting a region-wide clean up on April 14. And to spice things up a bit, the cleanup is intended to be a friendly competition between communities.

Zer0 Waste Sooke is looking for teams in Beecher Bay, Scia’new First Nation, East Sooke, District of Sooke, T’Sou-ke First Nation, Otter Point, Shirley, Jordan River, Port Renfrew and the Pacheedaht First Nation communities.

Teams in each area can start and finish any time they like that day, but asked to take a photo of themselves by their haul and submit a final registration form when they are finished. There is no limit to how many teams can be involved.

Gloves, bags and bins for metal, garbage, and recycling will be provided. Registration is free.

Prizes in multiple different categories will be awarded to teams from the cleanup at the April 22 event.

“In order to make things fair to all communities, big and small, we are creating a formula to balance the scales and ensure everyone’s recognized for their efforts,” says Wendy O’Connor, clean-up coordinator for Zero Waste Sooke in a press release.

“Ratings will be based on a variety of factors: the size of a single team, the number of teams in a community, the distance or area of road, forest or beachfront covered, even the number of kilometers a team drives into the bush to track down a dump site. We haven’t worked out the full details yet, but we’ll have all kinds of fun prizes to distribute.”

Those who wish to participate in the cleanup can contact Wendy O’Connor at wendyoconnor@me.com, or by phone at 778-425-4333.

For further information, visit the Transition Sooke website at transitionsooke.org/earthday2018/.