All about Earth Day

People worldwide observe one day out of the calendar to honor our mother earth. They increased awareness about the immediate steps that we have to take to save the planet. It is not just a big fun week at schools, filled with collage-making competitions and other “go green” activities.

People plan tree plantation drives and large-scale clean-ups every year which come into effect. Whether people are concerned about the planet and environmental issues are a real thing or they are just doing it for the social media is secondary.

What is important is that they are taking initiative to do something better for the environment rather than having a sit back and relax attitude. Even if you are cleaning your neighborhood just to post a picture on the gram with a hashtag green earth, it still counts. Because no matter what the motive was, in the end, you helped the planet and in turn helped yourself.

The Day

The designated day to celebrate the world we live in. Every year April 22nd is observed as Earth Day all around the globe. People conduct conventions, seminars, and events across nations to bring together the 7 billion people in the world. Also, to spread awareness, and show love for the planet that we live in.

For an incessant number of years, the human race had indulged or rather splurged on the natural resources so abundantly available, without giving a second thought to the fact that this ruthless use will have inevitable repercussions. Thankfully we realized the gravity of the situation at a point where something still could be done to fix the problem.

From then on, elites of nations and people in a position of power who hold the ability to imply changes at a national or international level, come together to tackle the issues at hand and also to check the progress of previously implied plans.

Earth Day now includes myriad such events, ranging from school activities to mass-scale events almost across 193 countries! This day was first celebrated as Earth Day in the year 1970 where a group of people came together to spread awareness about the scenario.

Back in the day

A lot of precursor events happened that caused a shift in the natural environment that people could feel and see around themselves. Senator Nelson had been trying for a long time to bring it to the notice of the government that they needed to do something about this growing problem, but they just won’t pay heed.

So, he realized that the people need to voice their concerns and only then will the government understand that yes, the concerns about the environment are imperative. But instead of doing protests or creating an upheaval, people came together peacefully to discuss the current scenario and urge the government to take steps.

He started organizing more such awareness events where people came together to talk about the environment. Nelson initiated a worldwide movement. People just needed a push because, on a grass root level, they will organize more such events. Almost 20 million Americans celebrated Earth Day that year and that is when the politicians listened.

Since that day every year, people have started to bring forward and act upon the pressing issues about the environment. They even formed rules and committees to make sure that we are not just limited to talks. They are taking actual steps for the betterment of our planet Earth.

These days

We all know for the past 49 years is what the planet is in danger. It is because of our careless activities, and we need to fix it NOW. Or else there won’t be a chance of a Never. So, keeping in mind how serious the situation and how much we need to speed up the restoration process, every year we do more for the environment. We have implemented the changes and now measure what percentage of the goal of a sustainable environment have we achieved.

Earth Day Network is a nonprofit organization that has mainly taken up the responsibility of saving the planet Earth. It is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 75,000 partners in nearly 192 countries to build environmental democracy. They have organized mass drives which include tree plantation or awareness or march for a cause. Not only volunteering but also raising funds to help in critical situations.

What we can do

In the past few years, we have seen a lot of innovative ideas to act for the planet. The only sources to reach out to the youth of the world seems to be social media. We have seen challenges trending up like the Trash tag challenge, where people are posting before and after pictures of a place they cleaned up. Finally, social media is on the right track and people are talking about this growing trend. Also helping the planet in any way, they can.

Ditch the plastic challenge

Can you go an entire day without using any kind of disposable plastic? NO chips bags, Styrofoam cups, straws? Practice it for a day and compare the amount of plastic you alone as an individual has shunned. Now imagine if all the people around the globe did the same even for a single day. The colossal impact we could have been tremendous.

Celebrating the planet that we live in and showing love has got an all-new meaning now. This is what unites people across all religions, all nations, caste color creed, or gender. We unanimously want to make sure that a century ahead of now we don’t have to go to museums to recognize what a tree looked like.

Seize the day by doing something which ensures you are doing your bit to repay the debts of Mother Earth. But the question remains, why do we need to have a date in the calendar designated to celebrate Earth’s Day? Why don’t we celebrate every day as Earth’s Day! We need to hurry up and head in the right direction because time is running out.