Earth Day 2019
10Earth Day is celebrated in 140+ nations by more than a billion people, making it the most celebrated environmental event worldwide. Additionally, Earth Day’s 50th anniversary will be celebrated in 2020.
Some random Earth Day facts:
-It was first celebrated April 22,1970 Thanks to the work of Senator Gaylord Nelson and Denis Hayes among many others. Earth Day was recognized world wide in 1990. In 2009 the United Nations renamed the holiday International Mother Earth Day.
-The first day of Earth Day in 1970 20 million people took part in Earth Day.
-In 1971 500 Loblolly Pine, Sycamore, Sweetgum, Redwood, and Douglas Fir tree seeds were taken into space during the Apollo 14 mission by astronaut Stuart Roosa to orbit the Moon. The seeds survived the trip and have been planted around the world. They’re known as “Moon Trees” and if you follow the link you can find some of the locations of these Moon Trees.
-Earth Day has its own anthem by Abhay Kumar found here
-Recycling, reuse and remanufacturing account for 3.1 million jobs in the U.S. 84 percent of all household waste can be recycled.
Never underestimate the importance of recycling:
If every newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year. Unfortunately, only 27% of all American newspapers are recycled. Additionally, more than 100 billion pieces of junk mail are delivered in the United States each year.
Recycled paper requires 64% less energy than making paper from virgin wood pulp.
5 billion aluminum cans are used each year. It takes 90% less energy to recycle aluminum cans than to make new ones.
More than 20,000,000 Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tinfoil. All that foil is recyclable.
How to start a recycling program.
How are you going to celebrate Earth Day?
Let us know in the comments.
- 5 comments, 11 replies
- Comment
I don’t know if “celebrate” is the operative word here…I’m just going to keep on not being a litter bug and not doing what David Buckel did. I’ll say one thing, the guy was “all in” for sure.
@therealjrn I’ll have to read that later when I’m home. Thanks for the link.
@Targaryen @therealjrn quite thought-provoking
In celebration I bought my kid a toy that is made from 100% recycled plastic and that has 100% recyclable packaging. I have made a point to try and buy toys of this nature as often as possible.
I also stayed home from work to avoid GHG emissions from my 150 mile round trip commute. Yeah, that’s totally why I stayed home.
I already recycle everything possible, it’s been a habit/obsession of mine for many, many years. We now have curbside bins, don’t even have to sort anymore so it’s a lot easier than it used to be.
I am going to try to buy more bulk products to cut down on unnecessary packaging.
I wish that laundry soap, shampoo, etc could be sold in highly concentrated form. I can add my own water thank you very much and don’t understand why mfrs want to ship all that water weight around the country/world. I will, however, give a personal exemption to bourbon
And, to celebrate, I will honor Mother Earth by partaking deeply of her herbal offerings. Later, but not now
@llangley I have very mixed feelings about curbside, single-stream recycling.
People start throwing everything that might be recyclable in there, contaminating large amounts of recyclable materials. It’s been a growing problem.
There’s really not enough appropriate local education out there.
In my city, I am regularly visiting the city recycling page as a reference on what they’ll take in the bin because it’s not particularly intuitive. And I know most folks aren’t taking the initiative to check because I see all kinds of stuff they don’t want in the bins.
And what they take in my current city is different than what they took in the last city I lived in. They took glass where I used to live. They don’t here.
And, apart from that, you wind up with lots of people tossing in greasy pizza boxes or Krispy Kreme boxes. I don’t think those are recyclable anywhere, but you see it all the time.
Then most of the recycling happens in China, leading to more inefficient intercontinental shipment. And a lot of the shipments are deemed too contaminated with non-recyclables that they aren’t worth sorting and end up in landfills anyway…
All the above is really to say that I wish local governments or non-government organizations would do a better job of educating residents on what should and shouldn’t go in the bin, and I’m kind of surprised they don’t.
@Limewater Exactly!!! Last June my town sent a paper with the trash bill saying how to recycle for our county (replace caps on plastic bottles), in April they sent another which is totally different (remove caps)!!!
I was so excited to see these new How2Recycle labels on so many items until I realized they were not universal. We need standardization.
Another township posted online that you have to remove the rings from bottles. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
@callow Yeah, we have to remove caps from bottles, but nobody seems to know this. I had wondered it myself after living here over a year and eventually found an obscure page on the city waste management site that told me we should be saving caps separately and dropping them off in special bins at the local fire stations.
I do that now, but I didn’t for over a year, and I see lots of capped bottles in bins on recycling day.
I remember the first Earth Day. People were pretty excited about it. We planted some trees (don’t remember what kind) here in the land of Oz.
So, in honor of both Earth Day and myself lasting this long, I think I will go and moon a few trees.
@Barney and a new tradition is born.
@Ignorant
@Barney @Ignorant excellent idea, just be careful they don’t moon you first
@Barney did the trees gasp in shock?
@RiotDemon That’s my little secret.
@Barney
I brought home a new fern for inside my house and picked up a “pollinators wildflower mix” of seeds to toss around the edges of the yard. If it’s gonna grow weeds, they might as well be pretty ones that help the bees!