The History of Earth Day (and Why We Love It)
At Trash Panda, we’re pretty obsessed with helping out the planet, so it should be no surprise that Earth Day is basically our favorite day of the year.
Put simply, we believe that the best sport on earth should also be the best sport for the earth. Keeping our planet healthy and whole so future generations can play the sport we all love is why Trash Panda started in the first place.
But even though we work toward that mission every day, we find it to be extra special to have one day per year when millions of people around the world are doing the same!
Earth Day is an annual, global event “that raises awareness about environmental issues and encourages action to protect the planet”, and this year we got to thinking: how did Earth Day start?
In the process of answering that question, we learned 5 interesting facts about our favorite day of the year and how it came to be ⤵️
1. Why April 22nd?
The first ever ‘Earth Day’ was in 1970 and its primary focus was educating students on college campuses about different topics relating to the Earth. Because of that, April 22nd was selected as the date to not overlap with students’ spring break but also be far enough away from finals.
Thus, Earth Day is on April 22nd every year!
2. How many people are part of it?
Around 1 billion people celebrate Earth Day every year 🤯
As you can imagine, it’s led to some pretty incredible initiatives: like a US organization called One Tree Planted getting over 8,100 volunteers to plant 44,427 trees in 2023. In ONE day!!!
OR back in 2012, when over 100,000 people in China opted to ride their bikes to work for Earth Day 👏
OR even last year, when 625 people won “BINGO” in our annual Earth Day Bingo event with UDisc (..we just had to give y’all a shout!).
3. How “global” is it?
It took about 20 years for Earth Day to become a global event. In 1990, Earth Day went international with more than 140 countries participating. In 2009, the UN gave Earth Day the official name of "International Mother Earth Day."
Turns out Earth Day has both a nickname and a “full legal name” 😅
4. Does it have a slogan?
Every year Earth Day has a new theme or focus to raise awareness about specific issues or topics. For example, 2024 was ‘Planet vs. Plastics’ (fitting for the TP crew 😄) and the theme in 2016 was ‘Trees for the Earth’ to highlight how important trees are for all living things on the planet.
This year (2025), the theme is “Our Power, Our Planet” which focuses on renewable energy sources and how we can all work together to create a sustainable future.
Wind and solar are 2 of the most popular forms of renewable energy! | nationalgrid.com
5. Earth Day has its own flag AND theme song?!
Who knew?!?
When Earth Day started in 1970, a flag was created that shows a picture of the Earth taken from the Apollo 10 mission in 1969. In 2013, Abhay K wrote and produced ‘Earth Anthem’ which became Earth Day’s official song.
The official Earth Day Flag featuring the same image of the earth used in the header of this very blog post!
On April 22nd, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world will be planting trees, cleaning up their parks, clearing out hiking trails, apologizing to every tree they’ve ever hit with a disc.
And WE are a part of that movement.
Earth Day can be many things. It can be an opportunity to meet up with your community to get outside and play a round. It can be a day to learn about the companies out there who are doing some rad things with waste diversion. It can be the motivation you need to volunteer with a local organization that you find to be really inspiring. It can even be the smallest act of picking up a piece of trash you see while walking your dog.
Earth Day is a million small actions and intentions made by each of us individually. And those small actions and intentions can lead to ripples and waves of change.
Whether you’re reading this in April for Earth Day Bingo or at some other point in the year, we hope you can take a moment to go outside, play a round, and enjoy this Earth that makes the best sport out there possible!
Happy Earth Day 🌎
