Earth Day Festival on Sunday at WCC, Noon to 4 p.m., rain or shine
This free, family-friendly event features live music, entertainment, hand-on activities, and live animal demonstrations. Displays from more than 60 local environmental, nonprofit, and governmental organizations will focus on alternative energy, green building, conservation, sustainable agriculture and more. Selected Clean Energy Coalition members will have displays to showcase methods and materials to increase clean energy efficiency.
Program details are available online at www.a2earthday.org. The program guide attached to the Web page lists exhibitors and provides a schedule of the day’s events. The program guide is also available at the Earth Day Festival. The program guide is a passport format, which encourages children to visit several tables and participate in many hands-on activities and crafts in order to get a “stamp.”
Also enjoy free face painting provided by Ann Arbor Cohousing, and musical instrument crafts sponsored by The Scrap Box. Stop in to see the Bubble Man and be sure to make time for the Leslie Science & Nature Center’s Birds of Prey exhibit and Brian Cressman’s reptile exhibit.
A highlight of the event is the annual All Species Parade in which participants young and old bring costumes to wear representing their favorite plants and animals. The face-painting and musical instrument-making activities help prepare interested parade participants for the grand march. The parade begins at 2:30 p.m. in the entertainment tent (or auditorium) and winds through the event area.
Entertainment line-up in the Entertainment Tent (or indoor Auditorium, if needed)
Noon-1 p.m. Acoustic Sing-a-long and Jam
1 p.m. Renee Stokley and her handmade Cigar Box Guitars
1:10 p.m. WCC Student Singer-Songwriters
2:30 p.m. All Species Parade
3 p.m. Music with Joe Reilly
Food will be on sale from Silvio’s Organic Pizza, Pilar’s Traditional Salvadorian and Latin Cuisine and The Ann Arbor People’s Food Coop.
This year, for the first time, Earth Day will be a zero waste event coordinated by Recycle Ann Arbor. With the assistance of exhibitors and food vendors, all waste will be composted or recycled and nothing will go into the landfill. Marked containers for compostable and recyclable material will be available throughout the festival.
The festival location is conveniently right off the Border-To-Border non-motorized trail, which means residents of both Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti can bicycle right to the Festival on off-road, paved paths. The Earth Day Festival will be at Washtenaw Community College's Morris Lawrence building, on the east side of the campus, and marked "ML" on this map. For maps on the Border To Border Trail, visit bordertoborder.org (click on the "B to B Maps"
link). The Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition will be providing free, guarded valet bike parking.
The Ann Arbor Area Earth Day Festival is coordinated by the Environmental Education Network of Washtenaw (EE-NOW), a coalition of more than 15 local environmental nonprofits and agencies. This annual celebration has been held at several locations over the years. This year, WCC hosts the event on its 285-acre campus centrally located between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.
The 2010 Earth Day Festival is a free event thanks to sponsorship from Whole Foods Market, The City of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw Community College.
The 2010 Earth Day event was planned by the following organizations: The Clean Energy Coalition, The Ecology Center, The Environmental Education Network of Washtenaw (EE-Now), The Leslie Science and Nature Center, National Wildlife Federation, Recycle Ann Arbor, The Scrap Box, The University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, and Washtenaw Community College.
Nancy Stone is the Communications Liaison for Public Services at the City of Ann Arbor. She can be reached at nstone@a2gov.org. Visit www.a2gov.org for more information on local environmental topics including recycling, composting, water conservation, and choices for green living.
Your World provides local environmental information to our community. Contributing partners include: Washtenaw County’s Environmental Health Division; the nonprofit Recycle Ann Arbor; the City of Ann Arbor’s Public Services Area, Natural Area Preservation, Systems Planning programs for Energy, Environmental Coordination, Solid Waste, Transportation, and Water Resources.