Earth Day

Earth Day is an annual event celebrated every 22 April in over 190 countries to show support for protecting the environment. It is the largest secular observance in the world, with more than 1 billion people taking part each year. Earth Day was first held in 1970 in the United States, and it played a huge role in launching the modern environmental movement. The aim is simple: to remind everyone, every year, that we share one planet and have to look after it together.

  • Date22 AprilEvery year
  • First celebrated1970In the United States
  • FounderSenator Gaylord NelsonAnd organiser Denis Hayes
  • Participating countriesOver 190Truly global event
  • People involved each yearMore than 1 billionLargest secular event on Earth
  • Common activitiesTree planting, clean-ups, talksPlus school lessons and rallies

How Earth Day started

In the late 1960s, the United States was waking up to the problem of pollution. Factories were dumping waste into rivers. Cities were filled with smog. Pesticides like DDT were killing birds. Oil spills were ruining coastlines. In January 1969, a huge oil spill off the coast of California shocked the country and made many people demand action.

One of those people was Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin. He wanted a national day for the environment, modelled on the anti-Vietnam War "teach-ins" of the time. He hired a young activist called Denis Hayes to organise it.

The first Earth Day was held on 22 April 1970. About 20 million Americans (1 in 10 of the population at the time) took part, with rallies in cities and teach-ins in schools and universities. It was one of the biggest public events in American history.

What Earth Day achieved

The first Earth Day had a huge impact on policy in the United States. Within just a few years, the U.S. Congress passed three landmark environmental laws:

  • The Clean Air Act (1970), which cut down air pollution from cars and factories.
  • The Clean Water Act (1972), which protected rivers and lakes.
  • The Endangered Species Act (1973), which protected animals at risk of extinction.

The brand-new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was also created in 1970, partly thanks to Earth Day pressure. Other countries soon copied many of these ideas.

Fact In 1990, Earth Day went truly global. Denis Hayes organised a 20th-anniversary Earth Day with 200 million people in 141 countries taking part. By 2020, the 50th anniversary, Earth Day involved over 1 billion people in over 190 countries, making it the largest civic event in the world.

What people do on Earth Day

People around the world celebrate Earth Day in countless ways. Common activities include:

  • Tree planting: groups plant millions of trees on Earth Day each year.
  • Litter picks: cleaning streets, beaches, parks and rivers.
  • School lessons: classrooms learn about climate change, recycling, biodiversity and more.
  • Talks and concerts: festivals to spread the environmental message.
  • Tree care: pruning and looking after trees that have been planted in earlier years.
  • Recycling drives: collecting unwanted electronics, clothes or batteries for proper recycling.
  • Bike rides and walks: choosing low-carbon transport for the day.
  • Petitions and protests: pushing governments to do more on climate change.

Themes through the years

Earth Day has a different official theme each year, picked by the international Earth Day Network. Recent themes have included:

  • 2020: Climate Action.
  • 2021: Restore Our Earth.
  • 2022: Invest in Our Planet.
  • 2023: Invest in Our Planet (continued).
  • 2024: Planet vs Plastics.
  • 2025: Our Power, Our Planet (focused on tripling clean electricity worldwide by 2030).

The Earth Day flag

In 1969, an American peace activist called John McConnell designed an Earth Day flag showing a famous photo of Earth taken from space (the iconic "Blue Marble" image). It is still used today as a symbol of the unity of humans across the planet. McConnell first proposed that Earth Day should be on 21 March, the spring equinox. Some places still mark "Equinox Earth Day" then, but Senator Nelson's 22 April date is by far the more widely observed.

Did you know? The very first photo of the whole Earth from space, the "Blue Marble", was taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on 7 December 1972, just two years after the first Earth Day. The image became one of the most reproduced photos in history. Many people credit it with changing how humans think about the planet: a small, fragile blue ball in the vast darkness of space, with everyone we have ever known living on it.

How you can take part

You do not need to be part of an official event to make Earth Day count. Some ideas:

  • Plant a tree, herb or wildflower seed in your garden or a pot.
  • Pick up litter in your street or local park (with adult supervision).
  • Walk or cycle to school instead of taking the car.
  • Eat a plant-based meal for the day.
  • Set up a "no electronics" hour at home and play board games instead.
  • Make a poster about something you care about, like saving the bees, and put it up at school.
  • Write a letter to your local MP asking what they are doing on climate change.
  • Watch a nature documentary as a family and discuss what you learn.
  • Try a beach or river clean-up if you live near one.
  • Donate unused toys, clothes or books to a charity shop.
Try this Make every day a little bit Earth Day. Pick ONE small change to keep up after 22 April: drink water from a reusable bottle, recycle properly, switch off lights, take shorter showers, or walk to school. Stick with it for a month and it will become a habit. The planet does not just need one big day a year, it needs lots of small daily actions from billions of people.
Deeper dive: how Earth Day inspired the environmental movement

The first Earth Day in 1970 came at a remarkable moment in history. The world had just watched humans walk on the Moon for the first time. Photographs of Earth from space were beginning to appear in newspapers, showing the planet as a fragile blue dot in the void. People were starting to grasp, in a new way, that the Earth was a single small home for all of life.

At the same time, pollution problems were impossible to ignore. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, USA, had caught fire in 1969 because it was so polluted. The Santa Barbara oil spill of January 1969 had killed thousands of seabirds. Lake Erie was being called "dead" because of all the chemicals dumped into it. People were beginning to demand change.

Earth Day 1970 gave the new environmental movement a public face. Within a decade, dozens of new environmental groups were formed (including Greenpeace in 1971), and many countries created their first environment ministries. International treaties followed: the 1973 CITES treaty protecting endangered species, the 1987 Montreal Protocol protecting the ozone layer, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change and finally the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Earth Day did not solve everything, of course. Many problems have got worse, including climate change, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss. But it helped create the basic idea that ordinary people can demand environmental action and that governments must listen. That idea is still alive every year on 22 April, and through the work of millions of activists, scientists, teachers and ordinary people who keep pushing for a better future for our shared planet.

For more, see climate change and global warming.