Earth Day 2011 – International Mother Earth Day

Friday April 22 is not just Good Friday but Earth Day. Will you be doing anything to honour it?

Earth Day is an annual event organized by The Earth Day Network hoping to promote a greener planet through greater awareness and action.

Earth Day was founded in 1970 in the United States by Senator Gaylord Nelson. In the first two decades this was an event organized in the USA only. In 1990 it became international and now has events in 175 countries. In 2009 the United Nations established April 22 as International Mother Earth Day.

The strapline of the Earth Day Network for Earth Day 2011 is ‘A Billion Acts of Kindness’ where each of us is encouraged to donate an act of green.

Acts of Green are divided in to categories such as education and transportation with hopes to promote its goal in a number of different ways. Examples of acts include planting a tree or riding a bike to work instead of driving your car.

You are also able to contribute your ideas to by submitting posts to their blog .

They provide a calendar of events that we can attend and we are encouraged to establish our own events.

Clearly attitudes to going green have changed. Green used to be a fringe political movement – now it is centre-stage with all mainstream political parties having green policies if of varying shades of green.

Business now have green policies and strategies as core to their business – at least in the developed world.

And as individuals it is now a common place for us to recycle and act in ways to reduce our carbon footprints.

To an extent then the Green Message that The Earth Day Network is promoting is already well established in our lives.

Nevertheless a day set aside to focus and reflect on how we treat Mother Earth is still very necessary – much progress has been made but much progress still lies ahead.

It is an admirable event but as one contributor to its website reminds ‘Let every day be earth day’.