Earth Day Facts
Earth Day is a time to celebrate gains we have made and create new visions to accelerate environmental progress. Earth Day is a time to unite around new actions. Earth Day and every day is a time to act to protect our planet.
- Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to watch a TV for three hours – it’s equivalent to half a gallon of gasoline.
- Earth Day was founded by a senator of Wisconsin and the day is credited for creating the environmentalism movement. First celebrated on April 22 in 1970.
- 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.
- Only 11% of the earth’s surface is used to grow food.
- The world’s first national park was started in 1872 at Yellowstone National Park in US.
- The first major international conference on environmental issues was held in Sweden in 1972 and was sponsored by the United Nations.
- The first wildlife refuge was formed on Pelican Island Florida in 1903.
- The patron Saint of ecologists is St. Francis and the first proclamation of Earth Day was made by the mayor of San Francisco in 1970.
- A highlight of the annual Earth Day ceremony at the United Nations is the ringing of the Peace Bell that was given to the UN by Japan.
