April 22 has been synonymous with Earth Day since 1970, but it wasn’t until 20 years later, in 1990, that the annual celebration of all things Mother Nature really took off internationally. Jed Goldberg, President of Earth Day Canada, has helped facilitate the awareness and involvement about this important day throughout Canada. Now in operation for well over two decades, Earth Day Canada stresses Earth Day’s inclusiveness: It is a day of celebrate, reflection and education for everyone.

“There are so many big issues that we are faced with right now,” Goldberg explains. “So many things are going on that the environment is still considered to be an issue that can wait in many people’s eyes. This makes it difficult to get environmental messages through and have the opportunity to change people’s attitudes and behaviors.”

Practice Greenhealth is a nonprofit membership-based organization of 1,300 hospitals, businesses and community health centers in the U.S. and Canada. Its mission is simple but crucially important: examining how its member organizations’ operations impact their local communities and the staff they serve. Laura Wenger, R.N., Executive Director of Practice Greenhealth, says healthcare is nearly 18% of the gross domestic product of the U.S., but hospitals are one of the largest consumers of electricity and one of the biggest contributors of waste and pollution across the country as well.

“Our goal is to help hospitals and communities incorporate sustainability,” Wenger says. “Sustainability can be incorporated into patient quality aim, sustainability should be incorporated into the aim focused on [our members'] communities and sustainability can be incorporated into the financial aim of the hospital.”

Charles Read, founder and President of Payroll on a Budget, pinpoints the greening of payrolls to the early 2000s, when a number of factors, including Internet access and the widespread acceptance of direct deposit and debit cards, reached critical mass levels. Read’s company has worked in a completely digital sphere since 2005, collecting client data online, drafting money electronically and distributing all payments online with secure electronic pay-stubs.

“Once our clients are educated [about electronic payrolling], if they are environmentally concerned, they jump on it,†Read says. “We produce an environmentally desirable payroll system at a better price. You save green and green.â€

TerraCycle’s unique recycling programs collect countless materials not typically accepted by municipal programs and turn them into desirable, usable upcycled products. Albe Zakes, Global Vice President of Communication at TerraCycle, talks about the brand’s “belly of the beast” business theory: It is necessary to work with major retailers and big-box brands to positively shift their sustainable practices and inflict major environmental change. Today, Walmart is one of the company’s premier partners.

“There is so much waste being created in modern society,” Zakes admits. “Garbage is an incredible issue — there has been an incredible blossoming of packaging. One-third of solid waste is packaging waste. It’s important that we find a way to reuse, recycle, repurpose and upcycle this material.”