The idea for the first Earth Day was hatched, as many conservation ideas have been, at the 1969 UNESCO conference right here in San Francisco. It was celebrated for the first time the following year on the first day of Spring — March 21, 1970.  It’s since blossomed and is now celebrated in more than 192 countries around the Earth and many of the ideas promoted along the way have become mainstream. But how much further have we to go?

I was curious as to how things had changed so ran a few quick statistics that I found interesting — its far from exhaustive but is perhaps informative.  To me the take-home message from these few statistics is that we can recycle and reuse all we want, but until we deal with per capita consumption we are just skirting the edge of the issue. We clearly have a long way…