Earth Day and Easter

It’s fair to say that many people around the world will have a busy weekend of travelling and seeing family coming up. Passover begins on Friday, while many countries will be enjoying a long weekend for Easter.

So you’d be forgiven for forgetting about another special event happening this Monday – Earth Day, an international day of action supporting environmental protection that takes place annually on April 22. But don’t worry, even if you had forgotten, there’s a way to enjoy your celebrations this weekend while doing your bit for Earth Day – read on to find out more.

Earth Day has its roots in the early days of environmental activism in the 1970s, and now has grown into a movement spanning every continent with events in over 190 countries.

The theme of this year’s Earth Day is ‘Protect Our Species’, while last year focussed on plastic pollution. These are both areas of importance to us at ASC, and just last year ASC staff were present at a multi-stakeholder dialogue on biodiversity at the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN (FAO), providing input and expertise from the aquaculture industry. All of our standards were written with biodiversity in mind, whether that’s ensuring that salmon farms work with their neighbours to produce Area-Based Management plans protecting biosecurity, or requiring shrimp farmers maintain that mangrove forests that are home to so many species.

ASC is leading the fight against plastic pollution from fish farming, as the first aquaculture body to join the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI). Disposal of plastics are already covered by ASC standards, but will soon be subject to more specific requirements, while at the same time we are carrying out further research into the impact of plastic pollution in aquaculture which we hope will assist the whole industry.

But how can you take action to commemorate Earth Day? Well, even if your Easter or Passover plans mean you can’t attend any Earth Day events, you can make a difference with the food you serve, whether it’s salmon, shrimp or mussels: if you look for the ASC logo, you know it’s been farmed in a responsible way to minimise the impact on the environment. And we can even help if you’re stuck for ideas on what to do with your responsible fish: our new recipe pages include all manner of dishes. There’s a range of species and difficulty levels, but they all have two things in common – they’re delicious, and they won’t cost the Earth.