Earth Day was established on April 22nd 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson. Its initial purpose was to provide a platform for all the different environmentalist groups to unite under a single day to thrust forward their message of conservation and environmental preservation. The movement was successful with over 20 million people participating world wide by marches and rallies in the name of Earth Day.

The main theme of this movement was ultimately to push through reform for conservation and to drive home the need for action now. It provided environmentalists around the world avenue to get their message across to governments and large corporations to change their practices in favor of green production and farming.

The main strives were in the fronts of renewable resource usage and also the use of natural products. Just by following the guidelines on the usage of renewable resource and natural products environmental conservation would have taken a very large move forward. A large part of the natural product movement was on proper use of natural organic fertilizers as opposed to the wide use of synthetic chemical fertilizers.

Research over the years have confirmed that chemical fertilizers have contributed significantly to damage on soils and farm lands due almost directly to their use. They leach precious minerals from soils and effectively kill soils. Their widespread use post-war resulted in huge crop yields but also later desertification of those lands which previously yielded so much.

In addition to damaging soils and destroying long term natural fertility, the run-off leached from the use of highly soluble fertilizer has also caused huge damage to the surrounding water systems such as lakes and rivers who suffer from the access nitrification which causes access weed growth, algae blooms and eventual death of most of the fish in the water systems. This level of upset in the eco system has been likened to the affects of oil spills.

The best way to overcome this problem is to stop using synthetic chemical fertilizers altogether. Their real costs factoring in the eventual destruction of land and soil is astronomically high compared to simply using natural organic fertilizers. With organic fertilizers there is no risk of destroying the local eco-system and their long-term use will actually improve soil and land conditions without any adverse affect on the environment.

Natural organic fertilizers are made from raw materials that are generally waste products such as litter, unmarketable fish, compost and even plantation waste. It is taken in and recycled into something useful in the form of organic fertilizers. The best thing is the ecological balance that these fertilizers provide. Whatever is taken from the earth is provided back to the earth. There arent any manufactured nutrients that can severely upset the ecological balance.

The next step in the message of Earth Day is to get private citizens more involved in the conservation movement. Over the last 40 years, great strides have been achieved with governments and multinational corporations in adopting green practices. Now the focus is on local private citizens and how then can further the cause for global preservation and conservation. The first thing people can do is to adopt the use of natural organic fertilizer. Lawn fertilizers are normally chemical and with thousands of homes using them they are almost as devastating to the environment as widespread use in the early post-war era on farmland.

What damage was done in the past can only be learned from and repaired as best we can. We instead need to look forward and change our over-consumptive ways to improve our environment. Let our children enjoy with 100th year anniversary of Earth Day by saying that their parents were successful.