Amid the hippies and flower-children in turbulent America in 1970, Earth Day was born. Vehicles exhaled leaded gas. Air pollution spewed from smokestacks. And the Cayuhoga River in Cleveland was so polluted in 1969 it caught fire. That same year, a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, Calif., led to Earth Day’s founding.

Over the next 45 years, the Earth Day movement chose April 22 as the day to bring awareness to environmental concerns. Today, the country is much more keenly aware of environment concerns, and like most social concerns the environment has become a political powder keg.

The global warming, or climate change, movement has divided an already divided nation. One side believes that shifts in climate and temperature are attributed to human causes. The other side contends that though there might be climate change, the human effects are minimal and trying to change natural cycles is a losing proposition.

Politics aside, bringing attention one day a year to making the Earth clean and safe for future generations is a positive. Does anyone, regardless of political affiliation, want his or her children and grandchildren to grow up with dirty water or dirty air? Does anyone want to return to the days when rivers in major cities caught fire?

Preposterous.

Similarly, we cannot stand the sight of couches, televisions, refrigerators and who knows what other kind of trash dumped on the sides of our roadways. The side of the road, at last check, was not a disposal center. Yet it speaks to the character of those who would treat our roadways like that. Collection days for such items are held each year in and around Vicksburg. Dispose of it there, not on the side of a road.

And it is about time the people of Vicksburg and Warren County join the recycling business. It’s time for our river community to get serious about recycling and to preserve nature’s beauty we are blessed with. We need an expanded recycling program, one that reaches every household in the county.

It will take a bit of extra effort to separate cans from newspapers from coffee grounds, but the more we get acclimated to recycling, the easier it becomes.

Take a moment today to look at nature’s beauty and let’s all continue to be good stewards of the land so that the future will brighten for generations to come.