Earth Day 2011

March 26 was Earth Hour, and a few days later on April 22 that hour turned into a full day: Earth Day. Here in in Thunder Bay we had a number of initiatives, including a brand new one: an Earth Day event on April 16 at the Thunder Bay Country Market.

picture: Raili Roy

About 15 different organizations and businesses were offered a free booth to show local shoppers what is being/can be done to improve our environment. Anything from recycling programs to composting toilets (hmm, not all that different come to think of it) to beekeeping and soil testing. We were there, too, and thoroughly enjoyed the positive buzz that was in the air (with warm thanks to Raili Roy for organizing it all!).

picture: Raili Roy

The world was first introduced to Earth Day on April 22, 1970, when an estimated 20 million Americans attended rallies around the country and helped clean up their local communities.

This first attempt to start something of this scale on the national level brought all kinds of people together in their neighbourhoods, starting grassroots campaigns to help revolutionize the way we handled waste, recycling, power consumption, and conservation in general.

41 years on, the event has turned into something of a global phenomenon, a time to stop and think about our earth and our impact on it. Some cities even instigated Earth Week. Kinda makes you hope for the next logical steps: Earth Month and Earth Year...

What I like best about it is it empowers people everywhere to make change happen from the bottom up. No point in expecting politicians to make the change and blaming them if nothing happens. We are the change, and politicians better pay attention.
(Oh, and speaking of politics: you do vote green this coming election, right...?)