Make it Matter on Earth Day

With so many annual awareness days, our social media feeds are full of themed posts, blog articles and tie-in events. It can be hard to keep up, and for marketers, it can be tricky to know what to focus on.  In October, do you put your efforts towards Speak Up Month, Stoptober, Sober October, National Cholesterol Month, Black History Month or Breast Cancer Awareness month? This oversaturation of awareness days often means that, by the time you have done one, you’re already moving on to the next, having not achieved much more than pay lip service through a quick social media post. Awareness days are there to start a conversation and instigate real change. That’s why, this Earth Day, it would be good to pause and think about how we can continue the conversations into the rest of the year.

The first Earth Day, in 1970, came in the wake of an oil spill in Santa Barbara. It manifested as a sit-in education event at college campuses, designed to educate students on matters of environmental protection. 

It helped put environmental protection on the political agenda and brought about real change. That same year, the United States Environmental Protection Agency was set up, and soon after various legislation was passed, including the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts. 

Much like in 1970, Earth Day 2023 falls at a time of much debate about environmental matters.  However, the conversation has moved on from what we can do – into what we shouldn’t do, with organisations such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion dominating the headlines. 

But even the organisations themselves are split in their approach to protest, with Extinction Rebellion announcing on New Year’s Eve 2022 that it will ‘make a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic’.  However, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil have vowed to ‘double down’, referring to their actions as ‘civil resistance’, which continue to disrupt events across the UK. Just as recently as last weekend, two protesters stormed the World Snooker Championships and covered a table in orange powder to deliver their message “New oil and gas will snooker us!”. 

While it’s easy to get caught up in the debate about whether or not these disruption tactic protests are doing more harm than good, this Earth Day, we need to focus our efforts on what we can be doing to follow in the original idea of Earth Day and bring about real change. 

In a previous piece on this website, we discussed Greenwashing and the importance of companies ensuring that their actions are making considerable environmental change, rather than just a marketing ploy. 

This year’s theme is ‘Invest in our planet’, encouraging people to invest their time, resources and energy towards solving environmental issues such as climate change.

So what does that mean for individuals and organisations? On a personal level, it can be as simple as sorting through your recycling, changing your light bulbs to be energy-efficient, planting flowers or educating yourself on climate matters.

As companies, we can do so much more, such as evaluating our supply chains to ensure sustainability is a key factor in deciding on suppliers and having a clear Environmental Policy. Accreditations such as ISO9001 include this as part of its criteria, so it’s always worth working with organisations who have achieved this accreditation or similar, such as Green Dragon, or striving to achieve those accreditations yourself.  Meanwhile, internal initiatives, such as charity events, food bank drives or environment-focused ‘lunch and learns’ can all play their part.

All of this can demonstrate to customers, employees and stakeholders that you are taking meaningful action towards investing in the planet – not just on Earth Day, but throughout the rest of the year.