Flag of Ecology

The ecology flag copies that of the United States, but in green and white. Where the stars are, it carries a symbol that looks like the Greek letter theta (Θ). It was the flag of the first environmental protests of the 1970s.

How it came about

The symbol was drawn by Ron Cobb, a cartoonist from Los Angeles. He joined two letters: the ‘e’ of environment and the ‘o’ of organism. He published it on 25 October 1969 in the Los Angeles Free Press and put it in the public domain, so that anyone could use it free of charge.

The following year Jack Shepherd, editor of the magazine Look, put the symbol on a flag for the issue of 21 April 1970, just before the first Earth Day. He and two colleagues hung the first flag from a window of the magazine’s building in New York. The next day he travelled to the march in Washington.

How it has changed

It is not an official flag, so nobody has fixed a model. In the first version the symbol was yellowish green; later it was almost always white, and today it is also seen in yellow, as in the image on this page.

Other flags and proposals

Before the theta there had already been another environmental flag, also inspired by the United States one.

• No oficial · 1967

  The first environmental flag

  It was made by the company Paramount Flag, from San Francisco: dark green canton and light green and white stripes, for the clean air and the green land. It was seen at some meetings and protests, but the theta one eclipsed it.

What it means

The colours and the symbol are explained like this:

• Green

  the undamaged land.

• White

  the clean air.

• Theta

  Cobb’s ‘e’ and ‘o’. Look related it to the Greek letter theta, initial of thánatos, ‘death’, as a warning of the danger the planet is in.

• Stripes and canton

  they copy the design of the flag of the United States, with thirteen stripes and the canton in the same place.

Fun facts

1. The author of the symbol designed Star Wars creatures

   Ron Cobb drew several of the aliens in the Mos Eisley cantina in Star Wars (1977). He also worked on Alien and advised on the DeLorean of Back to the Future.

2. A 16-year-old student convinced the governor

   In 1970 Betsy Boze sewed an ecology flag for her high school in Shreveport, Louisiana. The school would not let it be flown, so she asked permission from the state legislature and from Governor John McKeithen, and flew it on Earth Day.

3. A week in place of the state flag

   During Earth Week 1970, the students of the high school in Aiken, South Carolina, replaced the state flag with a homemade ecology flag. It flew for a week below the United States one.

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