There is still a lot that we can do for our planet, and days like Earth Day help us to remember that. Earth Day 2025 happens on Tuesday, April 22, and it’s a day you’ll want to sit down with your kids to talk about sustainability and care.
Of course, kids don’t want to sit down and listen to a lecture. They learn a lot from the movies that are made, especially those that focus on everything Mother Nature has to offer us. Here are three movies that you should watch on Earth Day 2025 with your family.
The Lorax
For the first film, let's wind the clocks back to 2012 with The Lorax, based on the acclaimed children’s book of the same name by Dr. Seuss. The Lorax disguises a cautionary tale about overconsumption and deforestation as a family friendly musical.
The Lorax follows Ted, a 12-year-old who lives in a world where almost everything that should be natural is artificial. You even pay for air to breathe! Hoping to impress his crush, Ted embarks on a quest to find the impossible- a real tree. To aid in his mission, Ted's grandmother Norma tells him about the “Once-ler,” who is said to know everything that happened to the trees of the past.
Although Ted initially wants to get a tree for a girl he likes, he ends up learning a lot more about the sordid history of his planet. Having lived through deforestation, The Once-ler imparts the truth to Ted, and inspires him to help change the way the world looks at real trees. Is there a chance that Ted can bring the mythical Lorax back? Can he bring the forests back?
The Lorax is currently available to stream on Netflix.
WALL-E
While there are certain elements of WALL-E that haven't aged well- such as the relationship with WALL-E and EVE- the film houses timeless lessons about pollution, consumerism, and waste at its core. Lesson that have become increasingly relevant in today’s society, where waste, for no reason at all, has become the norm.
In the 29th century, WALL-E is a robot tasked with cleaning up all the waste in the world, one piece of garbage at a time. However, when another robot comes to Earth, he ends up falling in love, and the two accidentally end up on a journey in space.
Through the two robots, we slowly uncover what has happened to the people of Earth, who now live in a giant space station and have become incredibly obese because of laziness and the lack of gravity in space. Relying on robots for every chore, the humans are faced with a massive decision when they discover that reviving Earth isn't as impossible as previously imagined. Will the humans continue their sedentary lifestyle or rise to the occasion and bring their planet back to full health?
WALL-E is currently available to stream on Disney+.
The Wild Robot
Finally, we get a movie that was released recently, and it’s another story of how much we need to look after our planet. After a shipwreck, a highly sophisticated robot is stranded on an island. Programmed to perform any task she finds, our protagonist takes a lone goose under her metaphorical wing, hoping to teach it how to fly home before winter.
Our robotic hero is helped by a series of animals, even though they view her as a monster at first. When a harsh winter rolls in, the animals realize that Roz, the robot, isn’t the villain of the story at all. Roz can offer them shelter and hope, but can she succeed in getting her goose to safety? And what happens when other robots come to get Roz back and find out that she is “defective?”
There is a beautiful tale of the circle of life, of survival, and of how everything in nature has a role to place. This is one of those movies to watch with younger kids as there are some topics about death that are sure to come up, but it brings a tale of helping to protect our planet.
The Wild Robot is currently streaming on Peacock.