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Festival gives residents chance to help environment
By Chris Roark, croark@starlocalnews.com
Southlake’s fourth annual Green Fest is in the books, and organizers hope it will have a rippling positive effect on the environment.
Green Fest, formerly called Southlake Green Day, brought in about 1,800 people, just short of the 2,000 organizers had expected beforehand.
“I wonder if the weather was maybe too good,” said Audra Lewandowski of the Texas Green Fellows, which sponsored the event. “Since it was the first really beautiful weekend of the year, a lot of people might have gone to the lake or the pools.”
One highlight of the event was a raffling off for two Apple iPads. One way to get tickets was for students in kindergarten through the sixth grade bringing empty juice pouches to the event, and for every 10 pouches they donate, they received one ticket for a raffle drawing.
“One mother brought in 190 juice pouches,” Lewandowski said. “She said it was from ‘Soccer Saturday.’ She went around to all the trash cans at the soccer fields and picked up all the juice pouches. She kept those from getting into the landfill, and instead, they can be used to make other things like backpacks.”
Later, there was a scavenger hunt in which students went to various booths and answer environmental questions. Correct answers also entered students in a drawing for an iPad.
The event also had a variety of booths from representatives discussing their companies and organizations and how they help the environment. Among those was Batteries Plus, where residents could drop off old batteries and CFL light bulbs to be recycled. Rapid Refill was also on hand to recycle old ink cartridges.
Solar City had a booth to discuss solar panels.
“A lot of people are concerned with those electric bills that will be coming,” Lewandowski said. “So they’re starting to ask about solar panels.”
One of the biggest attractions was the Sea ‘N’ Recycle display, a tunnel that has been created by 8,000 plastic bottles.
Built by Amy Romans of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, the traveling exhibit pays tribute to Plastiki, the 60-foot catamaran that sailed the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Sydney, Australia. The Plastiki was built out of 12,500 plastic bottles to illustrate what can be done with recycled bottles.
Lewandowski said the project shows how humans can prevent plastic from getting into the oceans, which can create a gyre, or a ring-like system of ocean currents, of debris. It also shows how cluttered a small space can be surrounded by garbage.
Lewandowski said there are five gyres in the oceans, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is about the size of Texas.
“We set that up early Friday, and we already had people walking through it before the event even opened,” Lewandowski said. “It gave people a good understanding of gyres and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”
Lewandowski said the danger of the gyres is that when fish eat the debris, including plastic, that often comes back to humans who later eat fish.
“Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know, and things like this raises awareness and makes us think,” Lewandowski said. “Right now, we’re living a high-impact life, and I think we need to get back to a simpler time.”
Other features of the event included a performance by Radio Disney, which performed last year but was able to stay at the event longer this year.
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