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April 22, 2008

Earth Day: Work Smart With No More Empty Gestures

It's a beautiful day. Warm, sunny, quintessentially spring.

The perfect day to plant a tree.

Or change your light bulbs to CFLs.

Or install a water-saving showerhead.

Or all of the above.

After all, it’s Earth Day!

Now, before I continue, let me apologize for my somewhat cynical rantings.

While I think Earth Day is a great concept—a yearly day to inspire, educate, and change our planet for the better (we hope)— I have issues with its execution. It seems to me sometimes that how people celebrate Earth Day has gotten about as silly as saying Valentine’s Day is the only day you show your love for anyone.

Has Earth Day become America’s way of compartmentalizing conservation concepts all into one 24-hour-period? Is it a day full of symbolic gestures with no real follow-through, tuned to our near-commercial-length attention span?

What exactly is the point of having kids plant trees if they don’t take care of them for the rest of the year, or at least until they are established?

Some Earth Day activities are much more effective than others. The ones from school that I distinctly remember are times like cleaning up trash in parks. Yes, we planted trees.

Where are all those trees we planted now? Shouldn’t the town be covered with dogwoods by now? Well, the thing is, most of them perished. Of neglect. All that’s left of them now are the plastic bags they came in, those won’t decompose for decades.

What’s it they say about forming a habit? It takes at least three weeks of a routine for it to become a habit... Well, Wikipedia says:

Habits are automatic routines of behavior that are repeated regularly, without thinking. They are learned, not instinctive, human behaviors that occur automatically, without the explicit contemporaneous intention of the person.

In Japan, it’s part of the school curriculum for children to help out with the school chores, like sweeping, tidying up the classroom, and cleaning the chalkboards and such. These simple routine tasks help teach kids responsibility and organization and keeps them out of trouble, not to mention cuts down on the school budgetary needs for janitorial services.

Earth Day’s only one day, so really it can do little more than inspire one to make changes, but not really enact them. Follow-through is left up to the individual (never a good thing). Perhaps that is enough for some, but with so many global environmental concerns, we need to make more substantial changes. And those changes need to be longer lasting, habit changing, and have sensible goals. Really, Earth Day needs to be Earth Month. Even better, work it in every day.

In the latest episode of the Get-It-Done Guy’s Quick And Dirty Tips To Work Less and Do More , Stever Robins talks about making an impact when you have a little spare time using process improvement techniques. He argues that the best way to use your spare time is to spend it improving what you already do, so you can do it better, faster and more efficiently.

Earth Day should be about making a difference. An impact. Preferably one of positive and lasting change. So it’s best to think hard about the real, personal challenges you’re already facing at your home, school or workplace. If it’s only going to be one day—one small bit of spare time to consider the environment we live in—then, by golly, we need to make it COUNT.

At the local library this year, kids are invited to come and planting seeds in disposable paper cups, cups that may or may not make it all the way home, and certainly aren’t likely to survive. They’d be better served having the kids help plant the spring landscaping in the town green adjacent to the library. Something the kids will be able to see for the rest of the summer, something they can be proud of, something likely to succeed. Not to mention save money. And paper cups.

In short, use Earth Day for problem-solving as a community and focus on the problems we really face in our daily lives. Problems like how difficult it is to find a freaking recycling bin. Or how we need to plant drought-resistant landscaping plants around our schools and public buildings. The list of things that would actually help is endless.

No more empty gestures.

Posted by sorsha at April 22, 2008 9:14 AM