JENNIFER GRZESKOWIAK

This year's Earth Day activities ranged from companies collecting old computers to scuba divers cleaning up trash from the nation's shores.

The New York City Department of Sanitation celebrated a few days early by accepting $422,000 from the Clean Air Communities' Queens Clean Air Project, whose aim is to improve public health through better air quality. The money will be used to retrofit 65 collection trucks that cover northwest Queens with advanced pollution controls manufactured by Cleaire Advanced Emission Controls, a division of Cummins West.

The Clean Streets + Clean Air = Clean Communities event took place on April 19 at a park in Queens, where three of the retrofitted trucks were unveiled and demonstrated.