41st Earth Day Exceeds 100 Million Acts

From sixth-grade Iraqi mine survivors planting trees without hands and Detroit school kids building a plastic bottle boat to Malays cleaning up their waterfalls, individuals and organizations from Delhi, Louisiana to New Delhi have racked up over 100 million Acts of Green in honor of the 41st Earth Day, which took place on April 22.

The achievement puts Earth Day Network’s Billion Acts of Green campaign well on the road to success for delivering a billion acts to world leaders at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to spur action against climate change. It is a fitting new chapter to Earth Day’s historic legacy of inspiring ordinary people to take action against Earth crises.

Earth Day India was one of our great highlights this year, as approximately 150 cities and towns in India held Earth Day events, with an enthusiasm rivaling the first Earth Day in 1970.  Earth Day India 2011 partners included the million-member trade union Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA). 

Globally, nearly 300 city and local elected officials are participating in Global Day of Conversation events with their constituents, in the U.S., China, Macau, Iraq, Mexico, UK, Albania, Italy, Uganda and South Africa.

Schools remained a huge contributor to Earth Day observances, with over 160 universities in the U.S holding over 250 events and 30 million elementary school students in over 60,000 schools receiving Earth Day materials as part of our Green Schools initiative.

Earth Day Network’s Canopy Project continues to make huge inroads against deforestation, as partners such as Trees for the Future, United Nations Environment Programme, Roots & Shootsin China, the Iraq Ministry of Agriculture and the African Rainforest Conservancy plant over 45 million trees across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.  

Finally, Earth Day Network just launched an app in collaboration with Facebook to help spread the Billion Acts of Green campaign. Go to: http://apps.facebook.com/billionactsofgreen.


Marsha Johnston is the Creative Director at Earth Day Network, an organization that works with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. EDN is proud to say that more than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.