Bridging The Gap For Business Sustainability: The Importance of Earth Day

With an increasingly lengthy list of very tangible global concerns, you’d be forgiven for forgetting this year’s Earth Day. As the world prepares to mark the occasion’s 56thanniversary, humanity is grappling with a reality wholly dissimilar to life in 1970. April is a time of increased attention towards the environment, so it makes sense to capitalize on Earth Day as a catalyst for facilitating progress in workplaces, especially private sector.

The ways professionals can contribute to the overall sustainability initiative, which is wholly a human initiative, is pulling action to drive powerful change into their business strategies. Here I explore the lessons we may glean for responsible business through looking at the emergence of Earth Day.

While reading the following, it’s worth asking yourself, “What can I as a responsible business leader take away to use in my organizations and share with my peers?”

Bridging the gaps stalling private-sector progress

Earth Day’s early success wasn’t accidental. It was built on community. Disasters around the world impacted localities in palpable ways. As a result, local stakeholders across the public, private and civil sectors came together to elicit meaningful change. Thus began a virtuous cycle of community giving back to community.

Climate psychologist Susan Clayton at the College of Wooster reiterates this model through her concept of ‘spheres of influence.’ Those who fare best in the face of economic, social and environmental calamity take issues far too large for one person to address and instead look at their own resources, responsibilities and influence at a local level. The same holds true for businesses trying to be more responsible.

I believe re-emphasizing the original Earth Day spirit of community will go a long way in bridging the gaps stalling private-sector progress today. The most glaring of these is the impetus to tackle all problems at once. Instead, as Clayton argues, look at a more granular level towards what’s genuinely most material. These must address the needs of local stakeholders. Trying to do it all will only come up against limited resources, capacity and willingness.

Green claims: the credibility gap

Community-minded thinking will shore up our credibility gap. Right now, many people simply do not trust the authenticity of a businesses’ green claims. ‘Green claims’ speak to a company’s environmental or social credentials, with phrases like ‘sustainably sourced’ or ‘eco-friendly’ being just two examples. These claims communicate that a business takes sustainability seriously. Often, though, they veer into ‘greenwashing.’ This can happen through overinflation of claims or duplicitous messaging and positioning.

Before acting for your business on your sustainability strategy, ask whose interest your work is ultimately serving and think through the potential impact. Consider how you communicate your company’s sustainability initiatives to your audiences.

If you keep community in mind, you can rest easy those answers will always be the right ones.

What is Earth Day and what does it mean for the planet?

The idea of an ‘earth day’ grew out of the wider public consciousness towards the planet in the late 1960s. From Rachel Carson’s 1962 bestselling book, Silent Spring, to highly public spectacles of natural and manmade disasters throughout the decade, widespread outcry created an environment ripe for change. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was the 1969 Union Oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Until that point, it was the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Santa Barbara served as the “ecological shot heard round the world,” with President Nixon remarking the incident had, “frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”

Out of this pain came action.

As hard as it is to believe in our modern world of counterintuitive political posturing, American Senator Gaylord Nelson is largely responsible for devising the global observance of Earth Day, which we still celebrate today. For years, Nelson had unsuccessfully tried to get the environment on the American political agenda. A renewed spark came as he flew over the Santa Barbara oil slick, noting his conviction that “…the same concern the youth of this nation took in changing this nation's priorities on the war in Vietnam and on civil rights can be shown for the problem of the environment.”

What happened over the next several months is nothing short of a community-building masterclass. By September, Nelson was planting the seeds of the environmental teach-ins at various universities. A chance meeting in November led to Nelson tapping Harvard graduate student, Denis Hayes, as the movement’s national coordinator. Hayes would work with advertising heavyweight, Julien Koenig, who volunteered his time to help guide the movement’s branding. In almost no time, the movement had an impactful ad about a day where communities could “start to reclaim the environment we have wrecked.” It would also have a name: Earth Day.

Encouraging Meaningful Change in Business

By April 1970, the stage was set for something big. In New York, the city’s organizing committee partnered with Republican Mayor John Lindsay to promote the event. Lindsay seconded his own staff to work on Earth Day, offered free use of Central Park facilities for environmental groups and even agreed to shut down Fifth Avenue for the occasion. In Philadelphia, Nobel Prize winners, Senators and poet Allen Ginsberg prepared to attend.

Amongst the first cohort of organizers in Massachusetts was a young veteran who would go on to do great things for both politics and the environmental movement, future Secretary of State John Kerry. Congress even adjourned so members could attend rallies in their home districts. The result? Twenty million Americans came out to celebrate the inaugural Earth Day. Thus began a movement that attracts over a billion people a year in every corner of the planet, the single largest day of worldwide protest.

How did this make a change in responsible business?

Driving awareness for Earth Day has led to groundbreaking changes which effect everybody, especially those running businesses. Since 1970, landmark legislations have been passed into law, including the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the US. This bid for progress soon spread across the globe, with many other countries following suit with similar laws.

In 2016, the United Nations chose Earth Day as the day to sign the Paris Climate Agreement. Since the Paris Climate Agreement there have been many wins across the globe. The actions of organizations such as those behind Earth Day, help drive the momentum behind the type of goals raised and decided at global summits, including COP31, which in turn together, driven by community, bring about real actionable change.

Community and Business Responsibility

While keeping the big picture in mind, it all comes down to community – action together.

A spirit of community will also remind us all why we do the work we do. Too often, we get bogged down in the minutiae of our roles, forgetting we’re ultimately in a caring profession. To save the planet and society requires us to do more than produce a report, review the next iteration of a package or listen to the same speakers at yet another event. We need to be spending far more time in our communities than behind our desks.

The world’s problems aren’t going away, but neither is the fight to fix things. Rather than succumb to their overwhelming pressure, consider this Earth Day an opportunity for you and your business to re-evaluate what action looks like, find your corner of the effort and show up for it.

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