Hi Reader,
What was the inspiration that resulted in a day each year being dedicated to focusing on the Earth? Pollution. The United States was riddled with it; the air, oceans, land and streams were visibly affected by the rapid industrialization that had occurred. Whilst, for a long time, pollution was seen as just being part of progress, a group of people started to see pollution as a problem that needed to be addressed.
“This planet is threatened with destruction, and we who live on it, with death,” environmental scientist Barry Commoner famously said in 1970 at the start of the first Earth Day. A biology professor at Washington University, Commoner joined CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite to broadcast “Earth Day: A Question of Survival” in support of nationwide protests (where, 20 million or 10% of the U.S. population came out to demand a healthy environment) dedicated to many of the same environmental crises we face today, especially pollution.
We have had 55 “Earth Days” since then, and yet we are facing a more dire environmental situation than we were then. The air may be a bit cleaner in some places, but it’s much, much worse in others. Why?
We have high demand for consumption, which drives extraction, which fuels pollution. This, along with the scale of humanity's appetite for stuff that is constantly replaced, drives a lot of the unsustainability issues we face. From the systems perspective, we have hyper-consumption loops and enforced disposability and pervasive greenwashing reinforcing the issues. Earth, despite being the only known life-sustaining planet in the entire universe, is devalued, disregarded, and destructed from every direction, day in and day out—less April 22, the one day out of the year in which it’s widely socially acceptable to appreciate Earth. Cue the eye roll.
This year’s Earth Day theme is “Our Power, Our Planet”. While it focuses primarily on renewable energy, it’s worth remembering that each of us really do have individual power to effect change within our unique spheres of influence. In this edition of Interconnected, we’ll unpack more on Earth Day’s role in the modern environmental movement and share resources that help you embrace your personal power in support of our beautiful shared planet. Let’s do it.
READ
The history of Earth Day
EarthDay.Org provides a cute timeline of the History of Earth Day. It's widely shared that there were a couple of key people motivated by the growing issues with pollution in their backyard, and with the contributions of some creative marketing and communication tools, people in the U.S. rallied around the topic.
Why every day is Earth Day
Grist, The New York Times, and The Guardian have all explored the issues with only one day a year being dedicated to the Earth. For us, each year when April 22 comes along, we think:
How different could our world be if we embraced every day as Earth Appreciation Day?
A note from Leyla:
By acknowledging and embracing the biophisical reality that each of us is in a dependent and dynamic relationship with nature, we can change the way we engage, respect and exist within this beautiful planet Earth! A few years ago, I wrote this article Why Every Day is Earth Day and these words remain relevant today:
Twenty-three thousand times a day. That’s how often, on average, a human breathes. Consider that as 23,000 reminders that every day is Earth Day. Breathing, the subconscious act of maintaining our own lives, is only possible thanks to the complex and beautiful natural ecosystem that we all come from. All living things have beautifully-evolved mechanisms of extracting their needs from nature in order to develop, survive, and thrive. For us mammals, we need lungs and oxygen, which are totally underrated until you don’t have them anymore; only once something is gone do we become painfully aware of just how much we need it. Like so many of the resources that we rely upon in our modern societies, we are blasé about their fragility until they start to run out.
I also wrote Perspectives on Earth Day 50 in 2020 to further expand the discussion and share resources that help us all take action, own the agency that we have in this system and make positive change.
Radical reuse is a key part of the future – and it needs an icon.
As longtime critics of the issues with relying on recycling, we were excited to share Rebrand Reuse’s design initiative and campaign to design a logo for reuse (Leyla is one of the judges selected to review the entries).
A key pitfall in the recycling system is that there is no universal recycling system, which in turn means the way that items are marked for recyclability is extremely confusing! Interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly), it seems this confusion was the original intention, according to this article on the origin of the recycling logo:
The recycling symbol became a tool of plastic lobbyists looking to stave off perceived threats to their industry by creating confusion over recycling. Perhaps Anderson’s recycling symbol now represents the most pertinent fact about recycling itself – it’s fundamentally broken. Rather than something which represents a continuous, unbroken loop—the very promise of a circular economy—it became a series of arrows chasing after themselves and going nowhere.
Now is the time to focus on reuse as the future. At scale, reuse can cut emissions by 80%, compared to recycling and other single-use options—a similar climate impact as grounding the global aviation industry.
But to make it work, we need a symbol that drives action, which is what the Rebrand Reuse mission is all about. Design entries are due by May 30, 2025.
To learn more about the competition and review the design brief, click here.
LISTEN
When the environment united the U.S.
Indeed, the first Earth Day in 1970 was a show of solidarity that kicked off one of the largest mass movements in U.S. history. But that’s not all; the support for Earth Day sparked major legislative changes in Washington DC. The National Environmental Protection Act (1970), the Clean Air Act (1970), and the Clean Water Act (1972) all passed with strong bipartisan support.
In this episode of HISTORY This Week, they explore how the first Earth Day brought so many people from diverse political backgrounds together and what we can learn from that today.
REFLECT + ENGAGE
Activate your agency
Believe it or not, individual actions do have impacts. We have done several projects and initiatives that help us all take action, own the agency that we have in this system and make positive change.
Here are 3 free resources you can engage with:
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