• Wion
  • /World
  • /Earth Day: Everything you want to know

Earth Day: Everything you want to know

Earth Day: Everything you want to know

Earth Day

Story highlights

Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 and was founded by the United States Senator Gaylor Nelson as an environmental teach-in to encourage make people aware of the environment issues

People around the world are celebrating Earth Day on Sunday to celebrate and honour Earth.

Various events are being held across the world in order to show their support for environmental issues and encourage each and every individual to take steps towards the environment protection.

Numerous communities celebrate Earth Week with an entire week of activities focused on the environmental issues that the world faces. In 2017, the March for Science occurred on Earth day (April 22, 2017) and was followed by the People's Climate Mobilization (April 29, 2017)

Add WION as a Preferred Source

Here is everything you want to know about the day!

Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 and was founded by the United States Senator Gaylor Nelson as an environmental teach-in to encourage make people aware of the environment issues.

Earth Day Network is the organisation who leads Earth Day celebrations worldwide.

The day was first limited to United States only, However, with efforts of a Denis Hayes's organisation launched this event worldwide in 1990. He organised events in 141 nations in a collective coordination.

In 1969 the incident of Santa Barbara oil blowout and protests that were followed prompted the idea of a day dedicated to earth only in which more than three million gallons of oil spewed, killing 10,000 seabirds, dolphines, seals and sea lions.

According to reports currently, more than 1 billion people take part in Earth Day activities every year and put environmental issues on the world stage.

For this year's earth day the theme is 'end plastic pollution' which will be focused on to provide the information and inspiration needed to eventually end plastic pollution. This year various talks will be held to spread awareness regarding the plastic pollution and how recyling it is not enough and what other measure people can take to tackle the global crisis.