Flag Display – Earth Day

There will be a display of flags in the town centre to celebrate Earth Day.

Earth Day is an annual event to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held in 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally including 1 billion people.

Earthday.org’s mission is to diversify, educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide. It is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 150,000 partners in over 192 countries to drive positive action for our planet.

In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honour the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. A month later, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event ‘Earth Day’. Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More than 20 million people poured out on the streets, and the first Earth Day remains the largest single-day protest in human history.