20 million Americans mobilized on April 22, 1970; 30 years later, that number was up to 200 million citizens of the Earth. What was the cause that brought these people together? The desire to make the Earth a better place.
Earth Day is not a holiday, but an annual event dedicated to demonstrating support for environmental action. Consider the math: in many Western countries, each person generates 4.3lb (1.95kg) of waste every day, up from 2.7 (1.2kg) in 1960. There are now 7.3 billion people in the world; with the current population growth rate of 1.1%, this means that in roughly 64 years, the Earth's population will be almost 15 billion.
That's a lot of garbage. Let's do our part, avoid the mistakes of the past, and keep our planet clean! If you have an image of pollution in our neighborhood, add a photo to this list - and then help clean it up!
#1 Koala Lost Her Home
#2 Turtle Trapped In Plastic Waste Couldn't Grow
#3 Tortoise Trapped By Plastic
#4 Surfing On A Wave Full Of Trash In Java (Indonesia), The World’s Most Populated Island
#5 Fake Hong Kong Skyline For Tourists
#6 Bird In Oil Spill
#7 Albatross Killed By Excessive Plastic Ingestion In Midway Islands (North Pacific)
#8 Stork Trapped In Plastic
#9 He Spends Each Morning Looking For Recyclable Plastic That He Can Sell For 35 Cents Per Kilo To Help His Family
#10 Oiled Penguins
#11 Seal's Nose Trapped In Plastic Waste
#12 Boy Swimming In Polluted Water In India
#13 Child Drinks Water From Stream In Fuyuan County, Yunnan Province
#14 Suffering Seal Not Safe In Its Own Habitat
#15 Bird In Oil Spill
#16 Ken River Oil Field, California (USA) – Exploited Since 1899
#17 Worker Cleans Away Dead Fish At A Lake In Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province
#18 Mexico City Landscape, 20 Million Inhabitants
#19 Man Cleans Up Oil Spill In Dalian Port, Liaoning
#20 Girl Walks Through Smog In Beijing, Where Small-Particle Pollution Is 40 Times Over International Safety Standard
#21 Child Swims In A Polluted Reservoir, Pingba
#22 Boy Swims In Algae-filled Water, Qingdao, Shandong
#24 Residents Look At A Heavily Polluted River, Zhugao, Sichuan Province
#25 Plastic Bag Floats In The Sea Off The Philippines. Ocean Plastic Has Turned Up Literally Everywhere - In The Deep Sea And Buried In Arctic Ice
#26 A Mute Swan Builds A Nest Using Plastic Garbage
#27 Frog In Polluted Water
#28 Landfill In Accra (Ghana). Our Electronic Rubbish Usually Ends Up In Third-world Countries
#29 Journalist Takes A Sample Of Polluted Red Water From Jianhe River
#30 Great Wall Of China, Shame
#31 Over 3000 Dead Pigs Fished Out Of Huangpu River
#32 Crab Lives In Old Bottle
#33 Fire At Oil Platform In Gulf Of Mexico, April 2010
#34 Fishermen Row A Boat In The Algae-filled Chaohu Lake In Hefei, Anhui Province
#35 Man Walks By Pipe Discharging Waste Water Into Yangtze River
#36 Terrible Pollution In India's Rivers
#37 Buildings In Beijing Surrounded By Smog
#38 A Family Walks On A Garbage-strewn Beach In Mumbai
#39 Boy In Polluted Water
#40 Indonesian Forest Transformed Into Palm Plantation
#41 Workers Clean Up Floating Garbage On The Yangtze River
#42 California Drought
#43 Workers Try To Drain Sewage Water From Leaking Sewage Tank, Shanghang, Fujian
#44 A Bald Sunbear In Borneo Where Major Deforestation Is Threatening Their Habitat And Health
#45 Boy Tries To Avoid Scattered Rubbish Floating On A Flooded Street In Shantou, Guangdong Province
#46 Pollution From A Factory In Yutian, 100km East Of Beijing
#47 Brazil Drought
#48 Part Of The Amazonian Jungle In Brazil, Burnt Down To Be “Repurposed”
#49 An Elderly Man Uses A Broom To Sweep Away A Burst Of Algal Bloom From The Surface Of A Pond In Order To Bathe In Jiaxing
#50 Young Raccoon With Fishing Lure Caught In Lip.
#51 Girl And Her Father Collect Water From Puddle At Dried-up Reservoir, Baofeng County
#52 Cat And Trash At A Beautiful Beach In The Westsahara, Morocco
#53 Blizzard Of Nor'easters No Surprise Thanks To Climate Change
#54 Dry 'river' In Northern Bali - When The Rains Come The Plastic Washes Out To Sea.
#55 Pollution In Tiananmen Square In China
#56 Mekong - Laos.
