earthfest

Today I spent the day at the 15th Earthfest, Boston radio station 92.9's annual "celebration for the earth." I had a great day with my friends, wandering around to the various booths, picking up lots of free stuff, and listening to some good music. Overall, I'd call the day a success, but I walked away somewhat disappointed in the greenness of this mega-event poised to spread the message of sustainability.

As a college student, I have been trained to sniff out and never refuse free food. So my friends and I mozied from booth to booth tasting the free giveaways - organic cereals, energy bars, juices, fruit, yogurts, etc. Now I know beggars can't be choosers, but I found the distribution of the samples, and some of the samples themselves, to be quite unsustainable. First of all, most of them were individually wrapped, and I know that this is for health reasons but it is incredible wasteful if you think about tens of thousands of people taking these little packages, opening them up, eating the food, and then throwing the wrappers away.

Second of all, as I've written about in a previous post, eating organic is more eco-friendly than not, but eating local is much more sustainable in the long run. So - especially as there were signs and tips all over the esplanade encouraging people to eat local - I was disheartened to see Whole Foods handing out free organic bananas. Now I know that they are delicious - bananas happen to be my favorite fruit- but you don't see too many banana trees around New England. Not this time of year, not any time of year. So that means that those bananas most likely emitted a hefty amount of carbon to make it to Earthfest. That just didn't seem in tune with "celebrating the earth" to me.

For all of the banana peels, cups, juice boxes and wrappers left over from all the samples, I was happy to see that Waste Management stationed trash cans, single stream recycling bins, and even some compost bins around the area. My complaint? Except for in one place, it was impossible even for this green girl to figure out where to put what waste. There were no signs explaining which kind of waste belonged in which bin - so it all ended up as just a mish-mash of trash.

My last and most major issue with Earthfest's green credibility was that I had trouble find information about the energy used to power the different booths and of course, the CONCERT. Was the energy from clean sources? Were the carbon emissions from the even offset?

**Added 5/25** It turns out that the concert stage was SOLAR POWERED.

I definitely discovered some great things today. I loved the little ecotips posted all around the esplanade that told visitors what they could do to live more sustainably. And I really liked seeing booths from mainstream stores such as Home Depot advertising their new highly energy efficient washers and dryers. Of course, the various nonprofit organizations signing up new members and getting their messages out - and handing out planting paper filled with seeds!

The best of all was izzitgreen.com, a rating website where users can log on and review businesses from a variety of genres ranging from arts and entertainment to financial services, health and recreation, spas and beauty, and restaurants. I registered on the spot, and I'll definitely be logging in to write a review when I get the chance. I think it's a great concept for a site, and much needed. After all, as I've been pointing out, it's hard to tell what's green and what's not in this greenifying world. See, even this dog thinks so.