Re: your April 23 article, “County Earth Day events celebrate renewed interest�:
Please have Alan Sanders, chairman of the local chapter of Sierra Club, take a look from a different perspective when he talks about Earth Day not having the public draw it had when first organized in 1970.
The one day, April 22, may not be as well attended now, and I believe there is a reason: Member of the public, instead of showing their support for Mother Earth on just one day, have now broadened their perspectives and actions, possibly because of education disseminated during Earth Day.
Here in Simi Valley, we have Clean the Arroyo day; all public transportation is now using non-polluting gas to run their vehicles, as does Waste Management’s trash pickup trucks; each home has three cans for trash now, including one for recycling yard products and another for recycling plastic, paper, cans and bottles; our local landfill uses the air-polluting methane formed at the landfill to create electricity for their use and that of 2,500 homes; there are many more solar panels on roofs than there had ever been thought of in 1970; Home Depot voluntarily gives away reams of paper printed on one side for interested citizens to use in their computers; your weekly yard waste is composted by Agromin and bagged as soil amendment; and the list goes on and on and on — and all because of the awareness started by that 1970 Earth Day.
These actions divert the attention from one day, Earth Day, and funnel it into many ways that individuals, cities and corporations are protecting our earth. Earth Day was a trigger for multifaceted earth-friendly protections to start and happily continue to multiply.
Mr. Sandler should consider Earth Day a total success every year, even though the attendance on April 22 may have changed.
— Judy Dwyer, Simi Valley
(The writer is a member of the Sierra Club. — Editor)
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