United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office Of The
Administrator
(A-101ED)
March 1990
&EPA Earth Day
1990 Project
News
&EPA
PRESIDENT PROCLAIMS APRIL 22 AS
EARTH DAY
At a White House ceremony January 3, President Bush
proclaimed Sunday, April 22, as "Earth Day, 1990." The
proclamation had been authorized by a joint resolution
approved by Congress which the President signed Novem-
ber 28. Among those attending the ceremony were Council
on Environmental Quality Chairman Michael Deland;
USEPA's Administrator Reilly and Earth Day Coordinator
Ann Boren; NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly and
representatives of non-profit organizations sponsoring Earth
Day activities.
"In deciding to make this Earth Day proclamation the first
proclamation of the new year - and the new decade, I might
add," the President said, "I want to make this point: Earth
Day and every day - should inspire us to save the land
we love, to realize that global problems do have local
solutions, and to make the preservation of UK- planet a
personal commitment."
In his proclamation, the President called upon Americans
"toobserve this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies,
and activities designed to promote greater understanding
of ecological issues. I also ask the American people to
rededicate themselves -- in their practices as consumers and
citizens -- to protecting the environment."
He also declared that the nation must "go beyond the
traditional regulatory role of government and continue to
seek solutions that embrace all sectors of society in
preventing pollution and ecological damage before they
occur," Pollution prevention is the key theme of EPA's Earth
Day, 1990, efforts.
Think Globally...Act Locally
You Can Make a Difference
EPA EARTH DAY PROJECTS
MULTIPLYING
Over 150 Agency projects are being undertaken in
conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the first Earth
Day. Eighteen headquarters divisions, every one of the 10
regional EPA offices and all nine major EPA laboratories
are sponsoring these special activities.
Since the EPA Earth Day Steering Committee held its first
meeting May 4, EPA staff have pitched in by organizing
activities ranging from publishing citixen pollution preven-
tion handbooks (by such offices as Air, Pesticides and
Pollution Prevention) and helping coordinate a household
chemical disposal day (Cincinnati lab) to holding open
houses at EPA laboratories around the country, making
presentations at schools, sponsoring poster contests and
hosting workshops.
Some of these exciting projects:
The first National Minority Environmental Career
Conference is being held April 9 and 10 in
Washington; it is being sponsored by the Office of UK-
Administrator in conjunction with the CHIP Fund,
Inc. (formally the Center for Environmental Intern
Programs).
"Alternatives to Pesticides" is a new brochure being
published by Pesticides. Did you know marigolds in
a garden deter rabbits, slugs and several insect pe-
The Athens, Georgia, lab and Region 6 (Dallas) arc
both sponsoring grade school poster contests to
highlight pollution prevention.
OECM employees are operating an international
registry of Earth Day 1990 tree planting and
maintenance projects.
More EPA Earth Day projects will be featured in the next
issue of EPA Earth Day News.
Printed on Recycled Paper
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YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
Get involved in Earth Day activities in your community!
You might suggest to your club, religious organization or
community group that it conduct a clean-up project, for
example. Or, you could do something in conjunction with
a school's science fair relating to pollution control
technology.
A long list of ways in which you can help is available from
our Earth Day Office, which also has a sample Earth Day
speech. Also available for short-term loan from the Office,
as well as from Regional Office and Laboratory Earth Day
contacts, is an 11-minute video which reviews environ-
mental conditions at the time of the first Earth Day, progress
made, challenges we face and what individuals and groups
can do on Earth Day and every day to protect and improve
the environment.
If you organize a project, please send a note to your office's
Earth Day coordinator so that your activities will be
recognized by EPA.
Headquarters staff can find out what activities such as
cleanups, tree-plantings and other volunteer opportunities
are planned in the Washington area by contacting the EPA
Public Information Center staff, which has compiled a local
volunteer sourcebcok. They can be reached at 475-7751,
or stop in -- they're on the S.E. Garage level by the Safeway.
Regional and lab staff might get ideas for community
activities in which they can participate from their Earth Day
coordinators.
BIRTHDAY PARTY
Planning for events to mark the Environmental Protection Agency's 20th birthday on December 2 is
already under way. Please give your ideas for celebrating that occasion to your Earth Day coordinator.
OA:
OHRM:
OAR:
OAQPS-RTP:
OCEM:
OFA:
OIA:
OPPB:
PPO:
OCPA:
OW:
R.T.P.:
Cincinnati:
Las Vegas:
Corvallis:
Boston:
New York:
Philadelphia:
Atlanta:
Chicago:
EPA EARTH DAY COORDINATORS
EPA Earth Day 1990 Project Office
Mail Code A101-ED
245-4150
Doug Cooper- A 106 OARM:
Clarice Gaylord - PM224 OARM Recycling:
Kale Fay - ANR443 OCLA:
Melissa McCullough OIG:
Lolelle Guthrke - A 1 0 1 1-6 OECM :
Judith Troast- A 104 OGC:
Adam Stem -A106 OTO:
Jamie Hill - PM219 OTS:
PriscillaHauery-PM219 OPP:
Carol Singer - A 1 08 OSW ER:
Alice Walker - WH556 OROSLR:
ORD-HQ: Jane Lovelace - RD672
LABORATORIES
Rhoda Ritzenberg Duluth:
Robert N. Carr Natragansett:
Marianne Carpenter Gulf Breeze:
Thomas A. Murphy Ada:
Athens: Robert C. Ryans
REGIONAL OFFICES
Brooke Chamberlain-Cook Dallas:
Ann Rychlenski Kansas City, Kansas:
Pete Bentley Denver:
Jane McConathy San Francisco:
Gail Cummings Seattle:
Dwight Doxey -PM212
GailWray-PM215
Leslie Goss - A 103
Madeline Nawar - A 109
George Aldcrson - LF.133
Linda Murray- LH130
MaryLouise Uhlig - TS788
Allison Freeman - TS799
Ellen Lawsoii-1 1750<>C
JulieKlaas - A101F.D
Brenda Greene - A108
Robert Drummond
Rick Lapan
Robert Men«:r
Barbara Wilson
Phil Charles
Rowena Michaels
Charles Gomez
Deanna Wieman
Ms. Jean Baker
2 EPA Earth Day 1990 Project.
March 1990
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FESTIVE EVENT KICKS OFF EPA
EARTH DAY PROJECT
Earth Day 1990 activities by the EPA were officially
launched December 1, with Administrator Reilly and special
guests participating in a festive ceremony at EPA head-
quarters. Joining the Administrator on stage were the
honored guests, former Senator Gaylord Nelson, "Father of
Earth Day;" EPA Earth Day Coordinator Ann Boren; CNN
vice president for environmental programming Barbara
Pyle; and ocean explorer and Executive Vice President of
The Cousteau Society Jean-Michel Cousteau.
Entertaining the audience with music and song were the
EPA Dixieland Band, children from the "Early Environ-
ments" child care center and the EPA Men's Chorus. The
event and the office's move were made possible by the
cooperation of the Facilities Management and Services stall
and many others in the Agency.
Here are excerpts from the remarks of Mr. Cousteau and the
Administrator:
Jean-Michel Cousteau:
Often, people ask me and ask my father ...'In light of what
we know today, where do we stand, and do we have a
chance to make it, or what are the chances to make it?' If
you reason, if you use your head, ... then unfortunately we
have to say it's not going to work. We are still in the process
of applying tremendous demands on our resources.... That's
the mind talking.
If you speak out of your heart, ... we are going to make it,
no matter what. And I'll give you as an example the very
fact that if you'd asked me or anyone in the world two or
three months ago the future of the Berlin Wall, n
could have predicted that, because of the heart, out of the
need, out of this tremendous drive to protect and improve
our quality of lives, the Berlin Wall has come down. ...
We are going to celebrate next year not only the 20th
anniversary of Earth Day but, I hope, "the decade of
solutions." It has taken us 20 years - and this Agency is
here to know that better than anyone else -- to comprehend
our problems, to figure out what they were, to do some
research. Now we need to roll up our sleeves, to become
ambassadors and spread the word and go out there and
provide solutions. It has to be the decade of solutions, and
we as ambassadors will do just that.
So I congratulate many of you who, way behind the scenes,
Continued on page 4
EARTH DAY OFFICE STAFF
Ann Boren
Special Assistant to the Administiator
and EPA Earth Day & Birthday Coordinator
Secretarial and
General Support:
Speakers Bureau
EarthDay Poster
State and Local
Governments
Liaison with EPA HQ
Offices
Community, Labor and
Religious Groups
Business and Trade Groups
Environmental Groups
Press Officer
Jean Harding (OAR)
and Johnanika Battle (OARM)
Janette Petersen (OTS)
382-7532
Marion "Trinky"'l"hompson (OW)
382-7239
Julie Klaas (OSWER)
382-2923
ScoU McMurray (ORD)
382-7223
Amy Dcwey (OAR)
245-3600
Dexter Mead (OARM)
475-8425
Bob Jacobson (Region 10)
382-7221
HELP WANTED
Headquarters staff: As the big day draws nearer, the Earth
Day Office's need for general assistance is becoming more
pressing. If you can spare any amount of time, particularly
after 4:30 p.m., please consider helping to make Earth Day
1990 a success by helping out at the Office. Sign up with
Marion Thompson at 382-7239.
To be more accessible to the public, the EPA Earth Day
1990 Project Office moved in December from the Mall to
a storefront office on the courtyard on the north side of the
Agency's Waterside Mall headquarters.
Available at the office are a variety of Earth Day items
prepared by the EPA and by other organizations, including
lists of ideas for individual and group activities, school
materials and, of course, the EPA Earth Day 1990 brochure
and EPA's "Recycle" brochure. We're on the east side of
the courtyard. Stop by!
March 1990
EPA Earth Day 1990 Project 3
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Continued from page 3
"orking very hard, I know. I think you deserve much
^ than you've received in terms of praise. ...
So we have a major, major responsibility, and I'd like to
see celebrations like these attract tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of people.
Administrator Rellly:
You may have seen, some of you, the "Murphy Brown"
television show.... You may recall that in that show the cast
decided to accept a challenge to devote two weeks to, well,
recycling their waste; carpooling to work; and purchasing
only "green," or environmentally benign, products. And it
turned out to be tough. It meant disruptive changes in their
lives. They got into fights. They were tempted to cut corners
and eat just one take-out meal out of a styrofoam container.
Well, it is going to be tough.... But each of us has got to
make a conscious choice to adopt this ethic of individual
responsibility in our own lives. The President said, back in
an important speech in Spokane in September, President
Bush said, "Through millions of individual decisions
--simple, everyday, personal choices -- we are determining
the fate of the Earth. So, the conclusion is also simple:
We're all responsible, and it's surprisingly easy to move
from being part of the problem to being part of the
solution." ...
The slogan for Earth Day is "Think Globally ... Act Locally:
You Can Make a Difference." The ethic, the idea that we
want to infuse in all of our work, is pollution prevention. ...
I don't believe, myself, that Earth Day should be an occasion
for long faces, even though the problems we have to address
are very, very sobering. I think it ought to be a cause for
celebration, and joy, and excitement a day for passion and
renewal of our sense of, as Jean-Michel Coustcau said, of
love for the Earth and all of the life that's in it.
EPA EARTH DAY 1990 PROJECT: MAJOR ACTIVITIES
A half-million EPA-prinicd Earth Day brochures are being
distributed. These recount the history of Earth Day and
encourage citizens to prevent pollution and to participate
in Earth Day.
Tens of thousands of the Pollution Prevention Office's new
pamphlet, based on Region 3"s work, entitled "You Can
Make a Difference," which lists a .variety of ways pollution
can be prevented, are being distributed. A new Pollution
Prevention Office video is being distributed.
A special Earth Day edition of the EPA Journal has been
published and includes an article by the President as well
as one by the Administrator emphasizing the necessity of
adopting pollution prevention measures.
Earth Day posters will be printed, featuring the winning
design from an EPA-sponsored contest among graphic arts
students; these will be available beginning in mid-March.
Pollution prevention education in the nation's schools, from
kindergarten through high school, is being initiated by:
Developing an elementary-level teacher activity guide \vhkh
will be distributed to 40,000 schools which have lien l;r:jnklin
Stamp Clubs through a joint project by the USPS and !
Providing EPA's Earth Day poster and a teacher-student activity
guide to junior and senior high schools by publishing them in
the National Science Teachers As^ illation's Journals.
Distributing copies of the special Earth Day EPA Journal issue
and the new pollution prevention pamphlet to junior and senior
high school science teachers nationwide by April.
Copies of the new teacher's guides for use in elementary and
in junior and senior high schools will be given to lil'A's
Regional Offices for distribution.
United States
Environmental Protection Agency
Office of the Administrator
(A101-ED)
401 M Street, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20460
Official Business
Penalty for Privato Use
$300
First Class Mail
Postage and Fees Paid
EPA Permit No. G-35
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