Back when magazines existed in print form, the month of April often had a renewal theme with the topic of sustainability showcased. Today most content is digital, and sustainability gets addressed regularly. Recently, I was flipping through past April issues of Packaging Strategies and Flexible Packaging and noticed the pages in those old issues used the classic recycling symbol to signal sustainability. It occurred to me that I can't recall a time when those three green, omnipresent M.C. Escher-like arrows in that familiar triangle shape didn’t exist. So, I did some research on its origin.
In April 1970, an environmental activist named Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day, the now annual event, as a response to an oil spill, which had seen an estimated 100,000 barrels of crude oil soak the shores of Santa Barbara, Calif., the previous year.