Hold the greenwash: Earth Day is more essential now than it’s ever been

Christians have Christmas, shoppers have Black Friday, and patrons of Nature’s dirt church have Earth Day. This secular environmental holy day falls on April 22 each year. There are estimates that up to one billion people across the planet now celebrate the holiday annually. 

For the initiated, Earth Day garners an instant reaction, with a spectrum ranging from saccharine positivity for the planet to anti-capitalist fist-shaking. But to fully understand where we’ve ended up, we must first revisit where it all began.

The first Earth Day was born in the United States out of protest and advocacy. Let’s take a trip back in time. It’s 1970. There is no Environmental Protection Agency. There is no Clean Air Act. But there is the Santa Barbara oil spill and Cuyahoga River fire. These two events sparked an environmental uprising in the US. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, inspired by anti-war educational movements, decides to galvanize the country to host rallies, clean-ups, teach-ins and demonstrations. It’s estimated that over 20 million people participated in events from local elementary schools to major universities.

Since that inaugural Earth Day, Nelson kept a running list of the legislation that has been enacted since. The impressive list includes everything from the Clean Air Act to the Safe Drinking Water Act to the Endangered Species Act, among handfuls of other legislation that has created frameworks for protecting people and planet.

The impact from the ripples of Nelson’s first Earth Day forever changed our relationship to (and regulatory policies regarding) the environment, but those aren’t the only things that have changed since that first educational advocacy burst in 1970. Celebrating the earth is no longer just a day, it’s a whole week, a whole month, and a call to celebrate year-round. Earth Week is the shining sun around which an entire spring season’s worth of outdoor holidays orbit. It’s a gateway celebration that leads to more niche festivities like National Park Week, Arbor Day and Celebrate Trails Day.

Earth Day has seemingly stayed close to its roots. But not even an environmental holiday is safe from commercialization. Earth Day now has its own ‘official’ namesake website, EarthDay.org––where for only $29 (plus shipping and handling) you can buy your kid an organic cotton hoodie that says “make every day Earth Day.”

There’s also a new term that comes with the cultural vernacular of environmentalism these days: Greenwashing. The word has become so ubiquitous it earned its own Merriam-Webster dictionary definition: “The act or practice of making a product, policy, activity, etc. appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is.”

You see, each year around the beginning of March, my inbox starts getting stuffed with pitches from tree-planting t-shirt brands and nonprofits asking to send me a nylon-based stuffed animal for wildlife conservation. With sudden urgency, every brand in America starts touting their newest product with a little less plastic, five percent more recycled materials, a skosh better sustainability, and one percentage of profits donated to insert-a-cause-here. It all feels a little off sometimes.

A colleague who works for a local non-profit environmental advocacy group recently remarked, “Funny how many businesses are reaching out to [redacted] for a partnership. Feels extractive.”

It’s easy to be jaded about Earth Day, but then again, it’s easy to be jaded about anything these days.

In a world where everything is content, everything can be monetized, and everything good gets snatched up by capitalism, Earth Day sometimes feels like another victim to the greed of it all. The idea that we can buy our way out of the climate crisis does not pass the Gaylord Nelson vibe check. 

Despite the lurking threat of capitalism killing the green vibes, there’s plenty good about Earth Day to be had too. At its simplest, Earth Day education is about celebrating the planet we live on. One outdoor enthusiast I spoke to named Andi said, “Earth Day is important like a wedding anniversary—you gotta celebrate it!”

It’s easy to be jaded about Earth Day, but then again, it’s easy to be jaded about anything these days. Does the world really need any more jaded keyboard enthusiasts spending our time heckling brands online while our tender eyes sizzle in the glow of a handheld screen clutched inches away from our faces? No, thank you. I think my time is better spent outside, stewarding my backyard. I think your time is better spent outside too.

I posed the moral quandary of Earth Day to my colleague Tori Duhaime, a digital marketer and photographer in Richmond, VA. “It’s refreshing to have a designated holiday that’s outside of religious or nationalist purposes and brings attention to the climate and planetary issues,” she says. “Of course, the greenwashing is gross, but it’s like Pride Month—it’s good to have a day where we collectively do look towards an issue and urge each other to keep pushing for solutions. Those of us who do already keep it at the forefront of our world views are the ones annoyed by greenwashing and look at them critically—and rightfully so. But it’s also a chance to get those who haven’t brought it into their core lifestyle and political expectations on board.”

I’ve decided to choose to celebrate Earth Day not in surrender to the greenwashers, but in defiance. To model what this day is really about. Stewardship, community, care, ecosystems, our relationship to nature.

While I’ll forever enjoy a grumpy chuckle at the greenwashing of it all, Earth Day nets out undeniably positively. It’s an invite, to all, to pause and ponder this planet. For us salty environmentalists, it’s a moment to dig deeper in our critical reflections on our community. For the uninitiated, Earth Day can be the first step towards recycling, going vegetarian and eventually developing their own gripes about how corporations need to start stepping up to address our dying planet before it’s too late. And to that, I say: Welcome.

The theme for Earth Day 2023 is ‘Invest in Our planet’. Find out more about how you can take action for Earth on the official Earth Day website.