According to Earthday.net, Earth Day is celebrated by a half a billion people each year. That's great news for the environment! Or is it? 500 million people celebrating anything doesn't sound very eco-friendly to me. And, where we live in New Jersey, we have a wide range of activities taking place over several days. We could celebrate locally today, drive to Philadelphia tomorrow, then take a trip to New York City on Sunday and really "show our support".

On the other hand, we could do nothing. Just imagine if all 500 million Earth Day fanatics did nothing for one day - no parties, no big celebrations, no driving, no TV watching, no eating out and no shopping. Isn't that what Earth Day is all about? Saving the earth. Doing nothing would do more to show how concerned we are about the collective impact we are having on our precious planet.

If 500 million people did nothing for 24 hours, we wouldn't...

...need to shower. A 10 minute shower uses 50 gallons of water. Not showering for one day would save 25,000,000,000 gallons of water.
... drink soda or bottled water. Since we throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles an hour, that would save 1,250,000,000,000,000 plastic bottles (This number assumes that all Earth Day people consume like Americans. Fortunately, that's not the case.)
...need to drive. This would save 13,000,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. (Again, this number is based on the average American driver.)
...use any paper. We'd save over 750,000,000 lbs of paper - the equivalent of about 22,058 trees.
...throw anything away. In one day, we'd save over 2,000,000,000 lbs of trash.

Don't get me wrong, Earth Day brings awareness to millions of people about the state of our environment, and that's a good thing. I just wish we could make an impact on people without making an impact on the Earth.