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 ------- 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 ------- 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 ------- 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 ------- |