Earth Day Essay

Submitted By meganfuhrer
Words: 762
Pages: 4

As people living on a planet to ourselves, working, producing products, expanding as a society whether it be new houses, buildings, jobs, food places and etc. When we first had all of these new things we didn’t think about the affects they would have on our earth. Considering this, who would have thought that those big buildings that constantly had smoke pouring out of them that also made the fancy cars, new dishwashers, T.V.’s, and microwaves could also be bad for us? It was said that the air was so dirty sometimes that tourists couldn’t see the city below from the Empire State building observation deck. It was then brought to Richard Nixon’s attention something had to be done. He then created the Environmental Protection Agency that would enforce laws that would protect public health and the environments as well. This set of laws then lead to the Clean Air act, a law that was designed to reduce air pollution. At the time cars would use lead gasoline, which contained lead that could be a brain stunt in development. As I said before not everyone was thinking about the effects these new products would bring. As always though, someone was. Being the year 2014 and seeing how far we have come, could you imagine being the person who started Earth Day. The founder Gaylord Nelson, first had the idea after the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbra. They figured if they could get enough of the public’s attention something could be done. And that is exactly what happened. On April 22nd 1970, 20 million people participated in the first ever Earth Day. The movement received what was seemed to be rare and unique support from people of every different background. Rich, poor, farmers, city slickers, labor leaders, even democratic and republicans. The first Earth Day was such a success that when the year 1990 came around environmental leaders were asking for another. The next Earth Day went global. This time they were 200 million people from 141 countries. The earth day of 1990 the main focus was have the importance of recycling made known to anyone and everyone. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Now to this day we are still fighting for a cleaner earth. The average person generates about 4.5 pounds of trash every day, which makes about 1.5 tons of solid waste per year. It is also estimated that 75% of solid waste is recyclable while only about 30% is recycled. Although that doesn’t seem like a lot there is still effort for a greener earth. With new recycled products such as paper and water bottles. The idea of using recycled products to make more of the same product is a sustainable and smart way to produce a product and although not every company knows that there are still many improvements from what was.
Earth day 2014 consisted of over a billion people in 190 countries. This year their main