In case you didn’t know, April 22nd is Earth Day—it’s kind of like our Superbowl. We didn’t want to limit ourselves to just one day, so we’re celebrating all month long with #earthmonth. And, we’re putting on a very special event to help celebrate. 

Earth Month Quick Hisory

First, a quick history lesson. Earth Day started in 1970 with Senator Nelson, a junior senator from Wisconsin, who had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States. In January 1969, he and many others witnessed the fallout of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Senator Nelson was inspired by the student anti-war movement and wanted to infuse the energy of student anti-war protests with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution. Senator Nelson announced the idea for a teach-in on college campuses to the national media, and persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair. They recruited Denis Hayes, a young activist, to organize the campus teach-ins and they choose April 22, a weekday falling between spring break and final exams, to maximize the greatest student participation. 

Throughout the years, Earth Day has gained popularity and notoriety and is celebrated by over 190 nations. Today, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national and local policy changes. The Earth Day Organization leads worldwide efforts to drive meaningful change through climate action, science and education, people and communities, conservation and restoration, and plastic and pollution.

Here at EcoCart, we care a lot about the planet and the fight against climate change, which is why Earth Day is such a big deal here. We work to help stores and individuals offset their carbon footprint, for free. We do this by donating to projects that go through rigorous carbon offset laboratory and field testing. We only fund projects that are carefully vetted, ethically proven, and scientifically verified according to the world’s major carbon standards. Our projects are also third-party verified with site visits by our trusted partners to ensure successful calculation of greenhouse gas reductions and management of funds. Our projects include providing clean water to families in Cambodia, building wind turbines in Turkey, and forestation projects in the United States. Learn more about our projects here. 

Earth Month at EcoCart

We have a full month of EcoCart Earth Month programming to help both save and celebrate the earth! 

April 5th: Launching our Ecommerce Earth Month Strategies Ebook – an ebook discussing 5 tactics brands can leverage in the coming weeks to capitalize on the excitement around Earth Month and Day.

April 12th: Release of our EcoCart Top 100 Ecommerce Brands Ecological Footprint Index – this microsite experience lists the top 100 ecommerce brands in terms of how and where they’re discussing their ecological footprint and the climate action they’re taking. We’ve used a proprietary methodology to evaluate how and where ecommerce brands are discussing their ecological footprint and what they’re doing to minimize it.

April 20th: EcoCart Consumer Report on Climate Action – a report built off of a consumer survey that asked consumers to discuss what their expectations and thoughts are around ecommerce brands and climate action.

April 18th: Hosted Earth Day Webinar – an event themed around what brands should and can be doing in terms of threading sustainability and climate action into their customer experience. We’ll dive into the year’s biggest trends on this topic.

All month long & April 18th in-person: Event with Eat the Change in NYC – This in-person event will be co-hosted with EcoCart and Eat The Change, bringing their IncrEDIBLE Challenge to life .

The incrEDIBLE Planet Challenge is an annual campaign that promotes a planet-friendly diet for Earth Month. Along with like-minded brands and chefs, we share 21 daily challenges throughout April to show how simple swaps can reduce your environmental footprint all year round.

EcoCart will be offsetting the emissions of the van used and has helped them with all of the calculations for the various challenges that the digital activation has throughout the month of April. If you’re in NYC on April 18th come to say hello in Time Square! More details to follow.