Choctaw Nation “Invests in Our Planet” on 52nd Annual Earth Day

Every year, Earth Day is celebrated on April 22. earthday.org, the global organizer of Earth Day, announced that the theme for Earth Day 2022 will be “Invest in Our Planet.” The holiday was created in 1970 and has grown into a global celebration. In the decades leading up to the first Earth Day, the public knew little about the effects of pollution on the environment.

Senator Gaylord Nelson, a junior senator from Wisconsin, had long been concerned about the environment. In January 1969, Senator Nelson and many others witnessed the ravages of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California.

Inspired by the student anti-war movement, Senator Nelson wanted to infuse the energy of student-led anti-war protests with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution. He announced the idea for a teach-in on college campuses to the national media and persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservative Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair. They recruited activist Denis Hayes to organize the campus teachins, and they chose April 22, a day between Spring Break and Final Exams, to maximize student participation. They changed the name to Earth Day, which immediately sparked national media attention and caught on across the country. Earth Day would come to provide a voice to this emerging environmental consciousness and put ecological concerns into the public mind.

Earth Day inspired 20 million Americans to take to the streets, parks and auditoriums to demonstrate. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests, and there were massive coast-to-coast rallies across the nation.

According to earthday.org, the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passing of other environmental laws, including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Clean Air Act. Two years later, Congress passed the Clean Water Act. A year after that, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act, and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act soon followed.

More than 1 billion people participate in Earth Day activities every year, and the holiday has become a significant steppingstone along the pathway of engagement around the protection of the planet.

The Earth is a sacred place for the Choctaw people. There are two oral histories of how the Choctaw people came into existence. One of those stories tells of the Creator forming the Choctaw people underground from yellow clay. They then surfaced from the earth from a cave at the base of a natural hill in Mississippi. Nvnih Waiya, Place of Creation, is known as the Mother Mound.

As Dr. Ian Thompson, Senior Director Historic Preservation, said in his book, Choctaw Food: Remembering the Land, Rekindling Ancient Knowledge, “We are all connected to each other through the land. We depend on the earth to provide the physical necessities that keep us alive.”

The Choctaw Nation has a long history of living with and caring for the land. That tradition continues today with Choctaw Nation Environmental Protection Services and its recycling program. The Choctaw Nation Recycling Program began in 2009.

There are two Choctaw Recycling Centers, one in Durant and one in Poteau. According to Jason Lilley, Choctaw Nation’s recycling manager, the Recycling Center has collected and processed 33,526,234 pounds of material, 449,955 tires and 9,450 printer cartridges.

Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products. Recycling can benefit not only the environment but communities as well.

According to the EPA, the benefits of recycling include:

• Reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators
• Conserving natural resources such as timber, water and minerals
• Increasing economic security by tapping a domestic source of materials
• Preventing pollution by reducing the need to collect new raw materials
• Saving energy
• Supporting American manufacturing and conserving valuable resources
• Helping create jobs in the recycling and manufacturing industries in the United States

There are several ways to recycle, even if your city does not offer curbside pickup. Several retail stores like Target have recycling stations at the front of their stores, and many cities across the country offer some form of recycling drop-off.

The Choctaw Nation takes that a step further, offering over 100 different recycling drop-off locations throughout its reservation and beyond. For a complete list of sites and a list of recyclable materials, or to see a video on the recycling program, visit choctawnation.com/services/recycling.

The Choctaw Nation’s Environmental Protection Services receives EPA, Indian Environmental General Assistance Program and Environmental Justice grants that help fund the program’s educational component.
According to Tracy Horst, Environmental Compliance Director, Students living within the boundaries of the Choctaw Nation are learning about the importance of recycling and environmental protection.

An Idabel Head Start student poses for a photo behind a recycling study station.

Choctaw Nation Head Start programs participate in recycling education programs that teach students recycling. For example, Choctaw Head Start students in Idabel took part in a six-week Reduce, Reuse and Recycle study.

Students learned various aspects of the recycling process and discussed what is considered garbage and what can be recycled. They then took all recycled material to the large recycling roll-off bin at the Idabel Field Office for the Recycling Team to pick up and process.

Choctaw Nation Environmental Protection Services helps the environment in other ways as well. “From an environmental perspective, we’ve also started battery collection and safe disposal at all tribal facilities; however, this is in conjunction with Facilities Maintenance and not Recycling,” said Horst.

This year, the department has a grant allowing them to do more events like tire, electronic, recycling and household waste collection events. According to Horst, there will be events in Caney, Wilburton and Durant in April.

For more on recycling and how to help the environment, no matter where you live, visit
epa.gov/recycle. To keep up with what the Choctaw Nation Recycling program is doing, follow Choctaw Nation Environmental and Recycling on Facebook. If you have questions about recycling, please contact [email protected].

What Can I Recycle?

• Plastics 1, 2 amd 5 (As well as shrink film and plastic bages)
• Cardboard
• Paper, including any kind that does not have a wax coating or is laminated
• Aluminum cans
• Tin or steel cans
• Printer and toner cartridges
• Styrofoam