Food is essential to every person on the planet, and we are all reliant on a food system that is contributing to some of the world’s most urgent environmental challenges, including increasing pressure on land use, fresh water supply, soil quality, biodiversity, and climate. Additional issues include diet related disease, food insecurity for 28% of the global population, food waste, highly processed food that has negative health consequences, and over-reliance on plastics.
One of the founding organizations of the modern environmental movement, the one that organized the first Earth Day in 1970, is now known as Earthday.org. Every year, this group decides on a focus for Earth Day and Earth Month. This focus is communicated to over 150,000 partner organizations worldwide, and EarthDay.org provides multiple resources to communicate the focus topic for that year. The focus for 2027 was recently announced, and next year’s focus will be Food for Our Planet. This theme will run year-round and will connect research, partnerships, and story telling as ways to bring this issue to the forefront of our political, economic, cultural, and educational lives. EarthDay.org is encouraging environmental organizations worldwide to prominently feature the role our food system has in respect to the urgent issues facing our natural world in planning for Earth Month and Earth Day in April 2027.
Green Newton in 2026 formed a new committee called the Green Plate Committee that focuses on the food system and provides many resources to the Newton community who are interested in both personal and systemic changes to the food system. The members of this committee will be working with the larger Newton community, including Green Newton, to explore ways we could potentially partner with EarthDay.org in their global campaign. The Green Newton Green Plate Committee is interested to hear from everyone in the Newton community who is interested in this issue with their ideas on ways we can promote a more sustainable, healthy, and abundant food system. We welcome you to contact us with your ideas.
John Dundon is a resident of Newton and member of Green Newton’s Green Plate Committee.