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 the day is to remind citizens of the earth for the need for conservation. It provided a platform for environmentalists to call on nations, global policy makers and even private citizens for the need to conserve our precious environment.

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.

Although very cheap to purchase and use the true costs of synthetic fertilizer werent fully know. Only after many years of use will the true costs become apparent. The unforeseen costs are a severe drop in the fertility of soil and farmland and eventual death or desertification of soils. The initial application yields are the greatest but are only available on a sloping yield curve. The synthetic chemical fertilizers will kill the soil that they are applied too over time causing the farmland to be unusable and probably bankruptcy for the farmer.

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 alternative is to focus on the use of natural and organic fertilizers. As the products used to manufacture natural organic fertilizers are natural and clean, there is almost no risk of upsetting the local eco-system with their use. The earth really has no place for synthetic chemical fertilizers and its devastating side-affects.

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 main problem that the sponsors of Earth Day are experiencing is not so much in the message getting across to large government organizations or even large companies anymore. The work that they have done over the length of approaching 40 years have assured that these large governments and international companies know full well the responsibilities that they have been entrusted with. The problem is getting individual private citizens to contribute towards the cause actively. The new trust of the Earth Day movement is to get everyone involved in the conservation of our planet and ecosystem. Most importantly, the least private citizens can do is to change their fertilizer usage patterns and start using naturally organic products so that leaching and the unbalancing of the local ecosystem doesnt occur.

Just because we have made mistakes in the past doesnt mean that we can allow this to continue on for the future. The time to act is now. Show your support for Earth Day by adhering to the message of conservation and protecting the environment from further harm. It is our responsibility to make this planet we live on a better place for our children and our grand children to live.