General News

Earth Day, investing in the planet 

April 27, 2022

By Kristena Schutt-Moore

Earth Day was Friday, April 22 and this year leading up to it the entire week of April 18 to April 22 was celebrated as Earth Week. However with the wet weather it has been hard to celebrate, or participate in any outdoor activities. 
Earth Day activities from around the world were live streamed to EARTHDAY.ORG the official website and organizations for Earth Day. By doing this the organization hopes to help people celebrate Earth Day all year long. This year the theme “Invest in our planet. What will you do?” and people were asked to “act (boldly), innovate (broadly) and implement (equitably).” This theme hopes to inspire more than 1 billion people to think, plan and act moving forward to help make the Earth and the environment a better place for all. This includes individual members of the public, businesses and governments. 
Here is what EARTHDAY.ORG asked people to do:
Individuals:
As Individual citizens, – voters, as watchdogs, and as consumers – people have the simple yet effective power to make their voices heard. What each person does, and how they do it, has a huge ripple effect on our ecosystems, and on the pace of corporate and government action. Individuals are responsible for holding business, governments, and others accountable and to support their efforts when they get it right.  It is up to each individual to decide how they can do that.
Governments:
National and local government officials can open new doors by incentivizing their citizens, businesses, and institutions to create and innovate. They can create a fair global economic system to implement these innovations and changes without giving up their role to advance and protect the public’s interests in this transition.     
Business and Investors:
Like other economic revolutions, inventors, innovators, businesses, and investors are the most likely to drive significant change. It is time for these change agents to step it up.  It is also up to us to require that they create value both for themselves and for society as they drive green innovation. 
There are also many activities that individuals, families and even organizations can start to help the environment, not just for Earth day but year round. EARTHDAY.ORG has a list of tips on their website under https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-tips/ that people can click on to get more information. Some of the ideas include planting trees, walkers or runners making a challenge with friends and family to see who can pick up the most trash while their are out together, joining the global earth challenge and help study why the insect population such as bees are changing by taking picture of pollinators on a cell phone, or organize a community clean up. Other ideas include in-house items such as switching to reusable water bottles and bags, or gardening and learning to create compost out of household food waste.
These are all things that can be done year round to help the environment and the Earth. Earth Day can be celebrated all year round, not just one day.