Is Earthday entirely ineffectual?

[NeilThrun]

Is earth day inneffectual? Largely, its an uncelebrated holiday. Some boy scouts and eco-freaks will go out and pick up bottles along a high way. Maybe plant a tree. The large scale ecollogy clean that needs to be done happens year round, in water filtration systems and reforestation projects.

[mc3p0]

Cigarettes are not made from much that is natural, rather they introduce new synthetics into the soil, streams and where ever else they collect and make contact. Burning releases that artificial "environment" into our lungs, then released into the air, trapped in the tar and larger particulates which stick to anything. A room used for smoking yellows from exhaled tar, not just nicotine. Even with our vastly retarded sense of smell or comprehension of air dynamics humans can easily smell the nastiness of just one butt expired in an ashtray. A common housefly can smell a mate from over one mile away. We can barely tell if the rice is burning until it's too late. The butt contains the majority of the tars since it's been sucked upon; they do tend to stink incredibly more than a none-expired cigarette - which smell somewhat sweet and friendly to me. Considering that billions of butts are not recycled properly the toxins generated are compounded by billions. They are not absorbed at anything such as a "natural rate" - there are no micro-organisms that traditionally eat those substances - that's why they stay collected in "the wild".

IMO, the issue isn't about whether cleanliness is next to Earthliness, but that we have a limited understanding of what "Earthliness" is. The nastiness generated by a volcano does more damage to the environment than all of the cigarette waste ever made. We have a choice to introduce our share of nastiness or not.

What we might consider is a publicly recognized checklist, chart, guide or almanac to measure better/worse aspects of our collective environments every year. The realization that there is not "better" in our charting might encourage change. Perhaps that could bring people closer to Earth Day.