Businesses in Topeka gathered in celebration of national Earth Day to make the city a little more tidy.
Polo Custom Products, Bartlett and West, KBS Contractors and Schendel Lawn & Landscape paired up April 22 to clean along S.W. Topeka Boulevard.
Brian White, vice president of Polo Custom Products, said those businesses helped in putting up the “Welcome to Topeka” sign as part of the Bring back the Boulevard initiative, so they felt it was only right to come back and keep things clean.
“It’s an opportunity for the local businesses to give back and help place some of that positive to the environment, to the Topeka area and just be able to collaborate together in doing that,” said White.
Earth Day falls on April 22 every year. This year, it fell on the Tuesday after Easter. Although the day has been celebrated for more than half a century, it isn’t federally recognized, as USA TODAY previously reported.
Hoping to grow it into a future citywide event
White said the hope is momentum will build locally.
“I think momentum builds up on momentum,” White said, “and I think positivity build on positivity, so when you think about this area that we’re working on today, it’s one of the entrances to Topeka. That’s the first impression people get when they’re in town and you want to have a good first impression.
“You want it to be warm, welcoming, inviting and clean, so I think the more that we have the opportunity to do that kind of thing together, the better off we’ll be overall as a community.”
Staff members from local businesses teamed up to clean areas of S.W. Topeka Boulevard on Earth Day, which was April 22.
What are the origins of Earth Day?
The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 when 20 million people went to inaugural events at schools, universities and other public areas around the country, according to the Library of Congress’s website, USA Today reports. In 1969, Democratic U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, of Wisconsin, proposed a series of “teach-ins” at university campuses to raise awareness of environmental threats. He was joined by then-U.S. Rep. Pete McCloskey, R-California, and activist Denis Hawyer, according to the World Economic Forum, but they wanted to create a national movement that extended beyond students and academia.
McCloskey, a pro-environment, anti-war California Republican who co-wrote the Endangered Species Act and co-founded Earth Day, worked to pass the Clean Air Act in 1970. The Environmental Protection Agency was created the same year after the public demanded cleaner water, air, and land as more disasters caused by climate change and pollution impacted the country.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Part of Topeka gets an Earth Day cleanup thanks to local businesses