Today at MyGo Containers™ we are pleased to be celebrating Earth Day.
This is the 52nd anniversary of the first Earth Day, considered the birth of the modern environmental movement. While the first Earth Day was in 1970, the environmental movement had begun years earlier in response to the post WW2 growth of manufacturing industry and the automobile results of the increased prosperity of America. These increases both contributed to a significant amount of air pollution which had not existed prior as the US had been largely agrarian.
In 1962, the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, became a New York Times bestseller, which sold over half a million copies into 24 different countries. This environmental science book focused on pesticides and environmental poisons raising awareness among the American public of the harm these were causing to the environment. The overarching theme of her book focused on the strong, and often negative, effect that humanity has on the natural world. While these ideas and much of the conclusions presented in the book have widespread acceptance now, they did not at the time and were highly criticized. But it is because of this book, and others that presented facts related to damage done by environmental abuse, that the environmental movement exists and changes are made to personal behavior, business activities and laws.
The first Earth Day itself was originally organized to be a teach-in on college campuses across the nation. A junior senator from Wisconsin, Senator Gaylord Nelson along with Congressman Pete McCloskey recruited a young activist, Denis Hayes to organize the teach ins. It was the idea of Denis Hayes that this idea had the potential to inspire All Americans, and he expanded the event to include a wide range of organizations and groups. The name change to Earth Day caught the attention of the media, providing national visibility. That first Earth Day incited 20 million Americans, then 10% of the US population, to take to the streets in a grassroots initiative to demonstrate the collective disapproval of the unchecked negative environmental impact caused by industrialization. Earth Day also unified multiple smaller groups, each fighting against targeted issues like oil spills, toxic dumps, extinction of wildlife, etc., into a louder voice that could accomplish more under the umbrella of the environmental movement. By the end of 1970, that first Earth Day led to the launch of the US EPA and the first of its kind environmental laws. These included the National Environmental Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). In the three years that followed, congress passed the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, which have protected millions of people from disease and death, as well as having protected hundreds of species from extinction.
From this amazing beginning, Earth Day continue and it is recognized as the largest secular observance in the world with more than a billion making today the day they take action to protect our environment and the planet.
From all of us at MyGo Containers™, where we hope to contribute in the reduction of waste through the replacement of single use foam or paper food packaging through the use of reusable to-go containers (TRTC), we wish you a Happy Earth Day and much success in your initiatives to protect and sustain our environment.
