Earth Day: History and Fun Facts

Earth Day, celebrated April 22nd, is a day set aside to honor the Earth. Did you know Earth Day is now observed in 175 countries and is the largest secular modern day holiday in the world?

As a sustainability consultant, clients and friends alike ask me for information on Earth day.

A little history lesson to start: Earth Day was first conceived by Sen. Gaylord Nelson in the early 1960s. Nelson worried that environmental issues were not being addressed in the political arena. In his conservation efforts, Nelson organized a nationwide grassroots demonstration in the spring of 1970, to further promote conservation involvement and awareness. Support for and interest in the activity was immense and the 1970 demonstration became the first official Earth Day. The first Earth Day helped inspire the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.

When sharing about Earth day, sometimes I think it's helpful to take the abstract and apply it more specifically. In my professional consulting, I've learned that it helps to qualify the ideas around Earth day into tangible actions. With that, here are some interesting facts.

Facts about Earth

Earth's surface area is approximately 196,935,000 square miles.
It is made up of approximately 70% ocean.
Land mass is approximately 30%.
Circumference is 24,901.5 miles.
The lowest point is the Dead Sea at 1,302 feet below sea level.
The highest point is Mount Everest at 29,028 above sea level.
The Earth's diameter is approximately 8,000 miles.
Water is 3% fresh and 97% salt water.
Earth will travel 1.6 million miles in its annual journey around the Sun, the 4.6-billionth such round-trip. It will rotate about its axis exactly once.
The Sun will travel 13.5 million miles around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Here's where my interest in eco awareness and living a sustainable lifestyle kick in:

Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to watch a TV for three hours - its equivalent to half a gallon of gasoline.
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.
More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tinfoil. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.

How do you plan to celebrate Earth day?