Yes, the world may be celebrating the earth and Earth Day April 22nd, but we here at Advanced Green Cleaning feel that we celebrate the earth and keep it clean every day—and in a way that’s entirely in keeping with the goals of Earth Day. The largest of which are to raise awareness about a wide range of environmental issues and problems, and to inspire people to take personal action to address them.
More particularly, in our case, our high-performance green cleaning program blends our traditional cleaning philosophy and methods with today’s green cleaning principles and innovative procedures, products and technologies. We use only non-toxic products, and all of our product containers, dispensers and applicators, cleaning caddies, microfiber laundry bags, trash bags, and other tools and equipment are all reusable and/or made from post-consumer recycled content. We also recycle all plastic, aluminum, glass, paper, other packaging materials, empty chemical containers, and worn equipment that are acceptable for recycling in the community.
On April 22nd, over one billion people in 192 countries will take action to protect our shared environment. People will be organizing, demanding climate action, cleaning up their local communities, meeting with their elected officials, planting trees, and teaching their children to protect our planet. When we were young, Earth Day inspired us to be more aware of the planet and how to live on it more respectfully.
And following the first Earth Day of 1970, when 20 million people around the world were inspired to give widespread grassroots support for environmental legislation, Congress passed many important environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as laws to protect wilderness areas. The Environmental Protection Agency was created within three years after Earth Day 1970. Recycling became common—and profitable.
Terms like sustainability and renewable energy and climate change hardly even existed back then. Earth Day shifted peoples’ focus. It encouraged individuals all around the world to “think globally and act locally”—to act as environmental stewards of the Earth, and it gave people around the world the opportunity to discuss environmental issues.
Without Earth Day, we may not have gotten to notions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), whereby corporations, not just businesses, have integrated corporate self-regulation into their business models. Today, nearly 70 percent of all global Fortune 500 companies have an annual CSR report. And between 2003-10, the number of companies voluntarily reporting their carbon footprint, through the Carbon Disclosure Project rose from 235 companies to 3,050. (One recent study showed that companies who self-report these figures save $1.5 million every year in interest repayments.)
This year, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has invited every world leader to the United Nations to officially sign the Paris Climate Agreement reached this past December. It is no coincidence that the agreement is being opened for signatures on April 22nd, Earth Day. “Earth Day is the largest, most recognizable face of the environmental movement,” said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network.
As the Earth Day Network closes in on its 50th anniversary in 2020, this year they’re hoping to get people to plant a tree as part of their Trees for the Earth campaign. They’ve pledged to plant 7.8 billion trees worldwide—one for every person on Earth.
Why Trees? Trees help combat climate change. They absorb excess and harmful CO2 from our atmosphere. In one year, an acre of mature trees absorbs the same amount of CO2 produced by driving the average car 26,000 miles. Trees also help us breathe clean air. They absorb odors and pollutant gases (nitrogen oxides, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and ozone) and filter particulates out of the air by trapping them on their leaves and bark.
At Advanced Green Cleaning, we believe in Earth Day and sustainability. There’s only one earth and we love it and we enjoy doing our part to protect it and keep it clean and healthy. And we hope you will too.