All of humanity exists on a rock hurtling at roughly 70,000 miles per hour around the sun. On this rock, there are over 8.7 million discovered species of living things. Friday is the day one of these species has decided to honor and celebrate this rock they call home.
Yet for UI student Kelly Painter, Earth Day is no more significant than any other day of the year.
Joleen Evans | Argonaut
UI junior Nanci Paz helps pick up cigarette butts for Earth Day, which will be celebrated Friday.
“I already work in sustainability and environmental cleanliness,” Painter said. “It”s so much of my life that Earth Day isn”t any different.”
Painter said in an ideal world, Earth Day would be celebrated every day, since people live on Earth every day. Even so, Danielle Gentry, event coordinator with the UI Sustainability Center, said the day is a great opportunity to raise awareness for sustainability issues.
She said people tend to be much more willing to hear about how to protect the Earth.
“Normally, they”d just be like, “I don”t care” but on Earth Day they actually listen,” said Gentry.
Painter said Earth Day began in 1970 after the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught on fire in 1969.
“It was so polluted from industrial waste one day, it just caught on fire,” she said. “And basically people were like, “Oh, no! We need to be better to the environment.””
At the same time in 1969, there was a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson used this as a catalyst to launch a massive environmental movement from coast to coast.
UI senior Jeremy Kestle said he wishes people would see how fragile the environment is.
“Little things that we do have a really synergistic, compounded effect over time,” Kestle said. “Just doing little actions day to day that are environmentally conscious can have a pretty big effect.”
These effects are important, Gentry said, because we are all humans living on the same earth.
“It all affects us,” Gentry said. “We all live on the same planet, we all drink the same water (locally), and people need to realize our actions have effects throughout the planet.”
Gentry said she wished people would see the value of the planet above all else.
UI Sustainability Center Director Amaya Amigo said there”s one thing she hopes students remember this Earth Day.
“The earth is just a rock,” she said. “It”s going to survive no matter what. It”s about saving the life that”s on it.”
Carly Scott can be reached at [email protected]