While I enjoy Earth Day, I find a lot of rhetoric surrounding the day focuses on thinking instead of actually doing.

Most notably, Earth Day raises environmental awareness by focusing our attention on the damage wrought by climate change.

By dedicating an entire day to serving the environment and staying conscious of our practices, we aim to create a planet that is not only worth living on but also one that will survive the already stark consequences of global warming.

But I have a gripe with Earth Day — it doesn’t do enough.

While Earth Day sounds great in theory, the labeling of a single “day” as Earth Day is far too limited — why can’t we have “Earth Year?”

Shouldn’t we always be caring for our planet and searching for ways we can lower our individual and collective footprint?

The first Earth Day was created by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson on April 22, 1970, as a way to force environmental consciousness onto the political landscape and cement it as a national day.

Thankfully, in Dec. 1970 Congress authorized the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address the absence of legal or regulatory systems to protect our environment. The EPA brought U.S. citizens clean water regulations through the Clean Water Act, eliminated harmful DDT (synthetic insecticides) use and mandated catalytic converter installation in American automobiles manufactured after 1975.

Unfortunately, a lot of these great early steps taken by EPA have been overshadowed by public complacency and legal precedents.

This resulted in backsliding rather than progress towards a cleaner planet.

For example, the landmark Sackett decision resulting out of the Supreme Court case “Sackett v. EPA” significantly limited the EPA’s ability to regulate water and wetlands.

The ruling amplified ambiguities in the Clean Water Act by redefining “waters of the United States” to exclude wetlands without a continuous surface connection to navigable waterways.

Instead, the short-term focus of Earth Day distracts individuals from creating lasting sustainability habits in favor of superficial acts like social media “pledges” or park cleanups.

Note that it is possible to both engage in such acts and pursue further activism without making lasting change.

Many social media users have harped that companies also leverage Earth Day to “greenwash” their products in marketing campaigns and business promotions.

This act of “greenwashing” could involve free promotions such as tote bags or water bottles that represent a “greener” alternative or using coded language such as “eco-friendly” or “post-consumer recycled plastic” to communicate a sense of responsibility associated with their products.

This could also involve misleading language that hides larger environmental impacts in favor of greater short-term capital gain and brand recognition.

Marketing campaigns on Earth Day often obscure claims with vague or ambiguous language, which grants companies plausible deniability to simultaneously present themselves as “eco-forward” or environmentally responsible while doing little or nothing to address harmful practices and systemic challenges perpetuated by such behavior.

Yet, some companies genuinely have good practices that set them apart from others this Earth Day — if anything, it comes down to whether they can back up such claims or not.

After this past week’s Earth Day and throughout the coming weeks, look out for terms like “natural,” “green” or “eco-friendly” without proper evidence supporting said claims. Be skeptical, and don’t let the marketers get to you.

It’s no secret that we need to take care of our Earth, but how come we only have one day allotted to care for the planet we all call home?