CommPRO Editorial StaffOn April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to streets, parks, and auditoriums to protest environmental degradation. This first Earth Day sparked the creation of the EPA and passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts. Twenty years later, one of Earth Day’s original organizers Denis Hayes appeared at the National Press Club to announce the launch of Earth Day as a global organization, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries.Denis Hayes returns to the National Press Club today to announce major global mobilizations ahead of Earth Day’s 50^th anniversary, including “Vote for the Earth,” “Earth Challenge 2020,” and the 2020 theme for Earth Day, which will focus on global demand for transformative climate action.Earth Day Network is implementing a nationally coordinated environmental volunteer cleanup to mark Earth Day 2019, in collaboration with partners across the U.S., including National CleanUp Day and Keep America Beautiful. All over the country people are encouraged to get up, get out, and help clean their communities to celebrate Earth Day.People have a right to expect a clean environment and can exercise that right by helping to clean their own communities with over 3,000 cleanups of green spaces, urban landscapes and waterways with grassroots organizations leading up to Earth Day and taking place throughout the remainder of the month of April.Volunteers across the U.S. are coming together with grassroots organizations for Earth Day 2019 to clean up over 3,000 green spaces, urban landscapes, and waterways. Plastic pollution and waste challenge every community, every day, and these cleanups offer a chance to make a real difference.Cleanups are planned in over 80 cities and town, including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Richmond, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.The Earth Day 2019 Cleanup aims to inspire volunteerism and achieve tangible impact on waste in our environment. The unified campaign includes mobile registration, digital mapping, social media, photo sharing, corporate volunteer engagement, and data collection on cleanup results.Building on best practices and verifiable metrics from 2019, this event will then be scaled up for the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day in 2020, which will be known as the Great Global Cleanup, featuring more than 100,000 events globally with goal of 1 billion pieces of trash collected.“The Great Global Cleanup will bring together millions of people around the globe to create the largest coordinated volunteer event in history,” Earth Day Network President Kathleen Rogers said. “We are excited to kick off in cities across the U.S. in 2019, and to expand globally in 2020 in honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.”