Earth Day & Leadership

My town is honoring Earth Day, April 22, 2023, by cleaning up the creek that cuts through its heart on the way to a river that empties into the Delaware River on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. Debris will be plucked by volunteers from the shores of the creek’s shallow waters—plastic bags, discarded toys (a doll’s head is a particularly horrific and funny find), a lawn chair, articles of clothing, and large branches and leaves that belong there but got snagged on the shore’s many rocks. A few years back, high school students dug up some of the creek bed’s mucky soil and sent it to a lab along with a water sample. Among the finds were forever chemicals and forever plastics.

Forever is not the word I want associated with chemicals in our water or plastics in our soil. In three months, a new family member will arrive, my grandson, and he will have to live with all the forever things we’ve dropped into our local creeks that end up in the ocean and in our food chain. Yearly clean ups are helpful, and when people come together to take care of the environment it brings me hope that our renewed attention to the environment will save trees and birds and creeks. Yet I’m also by turns sad, frustrated, and angry about what my generation was not able to see, or ignored until it was too late, or almost too late.

So, the question on my mind today is – what does leadership look like when it comes to caring for Mother Earth and her flowing and still waters? First, it is acknowledging that against stiff odds, progress has been made and victories won for the earth. Let’s build on our successes and appreciate that we have revitalized rivers and saved species from decline. And, we have to live with an earth we are degrading daily—our forests are disappearing, and our oceans are being fished out.

All pollution and environmental degradation begins in our households and with our personal and institutional habits. As with all change, we need to live it—be the change we want to see, as Ghandhi said—to make it manifest. This means living without the convenience of plastic and reusing and recycling as many products as possible, so they don’t end up in our creeks and oceans. Everything we consume, if not properly disposed of, becomes waste that the environment consumes in some way through the air, earth, and water, and then we consume it again. We are the leaders who can raise awareness and do something to renew our earth. Every one of us, in whatever position we find ourselves in our organizations and communities, can make some difference. Maybe a start is cleaning up our local creeks.

May the earth my grandson will walk on soon flourish and be healthy for generations to come!