The Agrarian's Alcove Celebrates: Earth Day

Good morning Agrarians!! Happy Earth Day! Hopefully you are out celebrating with fun Earth Day crafts and free activities! I always loved Earth Day activities as a kid. So when I started hearing about the activities this year, I wondered how this all got started. It’s a huge event that happens each year, and is celebrated in more than 190 countries! More than one billion people celebrate Earth Day. If we go back to the very first Earth Day, in April 1970 we see lots of protesters with their signs held high. The 70’s were a time of great protests. If you look at pictures of the first earth day, you will see children wearing shirts that say “Let me grow up!”, large handmade signs with snappy slogans, and people doing generally weird things...like walking around in gas masks. So obviously this was a classic grassroots protest. If you think our world is dirty now, you should have seen it before Earth

Day. Rivers were LITERALLY catching fire when someone tossed a cigarette into them because of all the toxic sludge. (Look up the Cuyahoga River fire...it caught fire multiple times.) Pollution was not being controlled by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) like it is now. Shout out to them for all they do! But seriously, the air in a midsize city at the time, was polluting people’s lungs at the same rate as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. WHAT?! If it hadn’t been for Earth Day 1970 we probably wouldn’t be doing so hot today. Or we’d literally be baking…in toxic sludge.

So, Gaylord Nelson came up with Earth Day. After years of trying and failing to get Congress on board with environmental policies to clean up our nation, he organized a national day of environmental protest. Of course that worked, it was the 70’s!! Everyone gathered all around the nation, and even some places in Canada to protest! Earth Day has been a success ever since. Obviously we don’t celebrate Earth Day by protesting anymore, but the principle is still the same. We still want to keep the Earth clean, and we want to find new ways of repairing and renewing it. April 22, 1970 changed America forever. Because of this wonderful day, the EPA emerged in the same year. The Clean Air Act was also broadened in 1970. Later, in 1973 the Endangered Species Act was passed. The 70s was a wonderful time for environmental progression. Finally, in 1980 Congress instated an act to begin cleaning up hazardous waste.We should all be super grateful for the first Earth Day and all the things it accomplished. However, during those first few years of cleaning up our world a lot of industries gave a lot of push back. For one, all the companies dumping toxic sludge into rivers and basins didn’t want to spend the money it took to implement safe waste removal procedures. The other industry that was greatly affected was the agriculture industry. During that time, farmers used pesticides without regulation. They didn’t know any better at the time, and honestly there weren’t many great environmentally friendly options out there. With the EPA involved, people actually had to create new formulas of pesticides and use them according to regulations (most farms now hire pesticide technicians…most households do too!). They also had to regulate runoff from irrigation. That was a huge cost in time and money to try to figure that out at that point in time. Of course, it all turned out to be a great, great thing and we should always be looking for ways to improve our environment and the things we put into it.

Today, Earth Day is mostly about removing plastic from the world and planting trees. Plastic pollution has become one of the worst pollutions because of its convenience. Y’all. Plastic is so easy. It’s so convenient. And it is polluting our whole world. It will be a rough transition. It’s hard to remember to bring your reusable bags in to the grocery store. It’s hard to recycle your plastic when there are no companies in your area that pick up recycling. It’s going to put some places out of business, but it is also creating new jobs for people. For instance, there is a company called Rareform that creates bags and wallets out of old billboards. Entrepreneurs all over the world are using old plastic to make new things. That being said, we don’t want to create more plastic. There is plenty of plastic in the world for these entrepreneurs to use right now. Stopping the creation of plastic would look like: you asking for paper bags instead of plastic at the grocery store, you recycling all your plastic in your home-even if it means you taking it to the recycling center once a month, and you not buying any plastic products. This means buying jelly in glass jars instead of plastic, making ranch from a mix instead of buying plastic bottles, buying glass containers instead of plastic. It would be hard!!! But sometimes, hard things have to happen so that great things can peek through. If Earth Day 1970 had never happened, we may not be here today. And it wasn’t just hippies who came to the Earth Day rallies that year. It was all kinds of people who cared about the future of the world. You don’t have to be on the zero waste train to reduce your plastic waste. Even if you choose just one thing to reduce your plastic waste (recycling once a week, not using plastic bags even if you forget your reusable bags, buying items with no plastic) it could make a difference. Let me know in the comments below how you are celebrating Earth Day and how you will reduce your plastic use!

https://www.earthday.org/

https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/guardian-epas-formative-years-1970-1973.html

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/earth-day-evolve1.htm

**This is not a sponsored post. The Agrarian’s Alcove has no affiliation with Rareform or Earth Day Organization**