Earth Day always falls on April 22, but this year’s global theme for the event is a campaign that will continue year-round. The largest environmental service campaign in the world, committed to stemming global warming, is the Billion Acts of Green campaign, focused on building commitments by individuals, corporations, and governments in honour of Earth Day.
Much more than symbolic gestures, we seek significant commitments to reduce energy consumption and create change in communities. As reported by media outlets in India, Argentina, Morocco and the United States, more than 1 billion people in 192 countries took part in Earth Day activities over the past year, and many of them participated in Billion Acts
of Green.
At the time of writing,
the program has registered over 42 million green actions. The goal is to collect and register 1 billion actions by the time the global Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro is held in 2012.
This program will reward and inspire simple individual acts and larger corporate or organisational acts, with a goal of measurably reducing carbon emissions and supporting sustainability.
To accomplish this,
we are continuing to work
on major partnerships
with 22,000 NGOs worldwide, as well as hundreds of thousands of schools and many corporations.
Earth Day Network’s Billion Acts of Green
website at earthday.org will help quantify Earth Day actions by providing an online event registration tool where communities and organisers can enter data on their activities, including messages sent to governments, petition signings, partnerships,
Earth Day events and community meetings on global warming, as well
as actions from Global
Days of Service (including tree planting, large-scale
light bulb changing, and home and office renewable energy retrofits).
Over the next two years, Billion Acts of Green will continue to be promoted, grow and reach its goal.
The plan will culminate at the Earth Summit in Rio where Earth Day Network will have a presentation.
Kathleen Rogers is the president of Earth Day Network.
