This year marks the 39th Earth Day, a day when people around the world come together to attend festivals, rallies, cleanups, tree plantings and other events focused on the environment.



It’s also a day for business, as more companies use Earth Day to highlight green products, roll out eco-friendly initiatives and spread information on green living.



The Earth Day of today is a far cry from the original Earth Day, when the event was a grassroots movement that helped spur the Clean Air Act, other environmental legislation and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. There weren’t any hotels opening up eco-luxury suites in those days.



For many businesses, Earth Day is now a marketing opportunity akin to holidays and national celebrations, a chance to join the push for a greener planet through greener purchases. Others use it as a way to instill concern for the environment in their employees and customers. And many are using it as a chance to talk about the work they’ve been doing for the earth.



"2008 is clearly one of the most active Earth Days from a marketplace perspective, in terms of the various consumer and retailer players that are promoting their offerings," said Nicholas Eisenberger of GreenOrder, a sustainability strategy and marketing firm. "There has always been some commercial activity. That there is the dichotomy between treating the earth kindly and making a commercial exercise out of it."



Eisenberger explained that much of the activity today is due to the heightened concern for the environment that’s grown in the last few years and rapidly spread throughout the media, industry, society and the world.



"You’re now seeing products that were under development two-three years ago coming to market now," Eisenberger said.



Environmentalism and Consumerism



Earth Day is no longer relegated to just one day a year. Companies are stretching it out and celebrating Earth Week and, in the case of Aveda and Wal-Mart, Earth Month. The retailer is using April to feature greener products in its stores and on its website. It’s also introduced items that, while not all new to the marketplace, are new to Wal-Mart stores, including shirts made with transitional cotton, mulch made from recycled tire rubber, and fair trade, organic and Rainforest Alliance certified coffees.



Others are tying good deeds that result from Earth Day to shopping. To receive tickets to the Macy’s One Good Turn charity shopping event, customers make a donation to the National Park Foundation. Banana Republic is donating 1 percent of all in-store sales (up to $100,000) from April 22-27 to the Trust for Public Lands, a nonprofit land conservation group. Banana Republic also introduced a line of clothes containing bamboo, organic cotton and other environmentally-preferred materials, and Macy’s other promotions include free reusable tote bags and saplings.



Promoting sales in conjunction with Earth Day leaves businesses open to criticism about using an environmental cause to further their own profits. "There are probably some companies out there that are just seeing it as a marketing hook," Eisenberger said. "But I think there is enough attention to the concern around greenwashing that most big brand companies we work with and we see are generally taking these issues seriously."



At the higher end of Earth Day promotions is the collaboration between Fairmount Hotels & Resorts and Lexus, which are unveiling two Lexus Hybrid Living Suites at hotels in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Visitors who stay at the suites get to use a Lexus LS600h L hybrid, and the suites contain items and furnishings made of organic materials or resources such as bamboo.



While some retailers are giving people the choice of greener products, some companies are giving incentives for living greener, such as Wells Fargo offering $250 to consumers who purchase new residential photovoltaic solar energy systems with a Well Fargo home equity loan of line of credit.



On the opposite end of purchasing eco-friendly products, Yahoo! is promoting the use of Freecycle reuse groups. Members of Freecycle groups across the county offer up or are willing to take practically anything for free, encouraging the reuse of things instead of tossing them when you’re done or buying brand new items.



Beyond the Bottom Line



Awareness is another key to business involvement in Earth Day. Bon Appetit Management Company, which runs 400 cafes for businesses and universities, is aiming to cut its emissions from food by 25 percent by reducing beef and cheese purchases, buying meat and vegetables from only North America and eliminating imported water and seafood shipped by air. It’s also encouraging customers to be aware of how their choices affect the earth with its Low Carbon Diet promotion, letting customers calculate the impact of each meal.



Aramark Higher Education, another food service provider running dining and facility services for more than 600 colleges and universities, will use Earth Day as a launch pad for education and awareness campaigns that will include resource conservation, recycling, removing trays from dining halls, dimming lights, conducting waste audits, collecting cell phones and batteries to be recycled, and providing local, organic, vegetarian and sustainable foods.



Businesses that aren’t as consumer oriented are also finding ways to speak to a different audience. Architectural firm HOK is encouraging its employees to start taking steps to reduce their carbon footprints by holding Go Barefoot Day. The company has set up a blog and promotional materials to suggest and share ideas for changing transportation and work habits. The Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington, D.C., is inviting employees and community members to clean up a park near the hotel and will also present information on eco-friendly products it uses, offer the chance to trade in light bulbs for CFL bulbs, sign people up to volunteer for the National Park Service and collect recyclable plastic items.



Promotions surrounding Earth Day offer the chance to impact a company’s financial bottom line, but other Earth Day efforts like Lights Out Houston focus only on the environmental bottom line. During that Earth Day weekend-long effort, commercial property owners and tenants representing more than 40 million square feet in Houston plan to leave on only security and emergency lighting, obstruction lighting and lights in offices being used.



Beyond educating employees and consumers, Seventh Generation, maker of eco-friendly cleaning products, is helping teach students about greener choices. The company is offering an Earth Day lesson plan for teachers that covers the impact cleaning products have on people, homes and the environment. It also gives kids a chance to create cleaning products with safe, natural ingredients and test them out.



Along with the many ways businesses are participating in Earth Day, their level of participation is also changing. A big shift has happened with fewer businesses seeing the day purely as a marketing opportunity and more companies making environmentalism a part of their business, said Gil Friend, the founder, president and CEO of strategic sustainability consulting firm Natural Logic.



"There are a number of companies that have more substance to talk about than they have before," Friend explained. "It’s sort of a mixed bag, some of it’s superficial, and some of it is more substantial."



Jonathan Bardelline is an assistant editor at GreenBiz.com.