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How Green is Our Town? Find Out!!
• Recycle Cell Phones, Eyeglasses, Rechargeable Batteries,
Blue Jeans, Computer Ink Cartridges (Get a free replacement)
& Electronics (10:00-2:00)
• See the Award Winning Documentary Bag It
• Enjoy savory snacks & delicious beverages at the Green Café
• Live demonstrations and eco-workshops
• Auto Show featuring alternative fuel sources & technologies
• The Dynamic PTA Green Team
• Fairfield Organic Teaching Farm/”Seed to Seed Library
• Recycling Magic with Bryon Lizotte
• Family Drumming Circle
• Play Earth Bingo Living, Clean & Renewable Alternative
Energy Choices
• Organic and Sustainable Gardening
• Great Local Food
• Play Earth Bingo

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Wendy Martinenas
Phone: (203)  767-3444
Email:  wendy@ctgreenrealestate.com

Whole Foods Market provides complimentary screening of the Award-winning documentary Bag It

Whole Foods Market, the nation’s leading natural and organic grocer, which plans to open its doors to the Fairfield community late this Spring, is sponsoring a screening of the new, award-winning environmental documentary Bag It at the Fairfield Earth Day Celebration on April 30^th at 11:30am.

Bag It follows “everyman” Jeb Berrier as he tries to make sense of our dependence on plastic bags. Although his quest starts out small, Jeb soon learns that not only has this has led to the formation of a floating island of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean  more than twice the size of Texas, but that the problem extends past landfills to oceans, rivers and ultimately human health.

The film explores these issues and identifies how our daily reliance on plastic threatens not only waterways and marine life, but human health, too. Two of the most common plastic additives are endocrine disruptors, which have been shown to link to cancer, diabetes, autism, attention deficit disorder, obesity and infertility. This year’s Earth Day event will feature an array of exhibitors from local residents and organizations to businesses that are leading and supporting green initiatives which are laying the ground work and creating a green infrastructure in  Fairfield. Visitors can mingle with Exhibitors offering services and information on energy, health, the environment, garden & home. The Fairfield Earth Day Celebration will be at Fairfield Warde High School at 755 Melville Avenue.  For more information go to www.fairfieldearthday.org.

Whole Foods Market: Fairfield will open late-Spring 2011 at 350 Grasmere Avenue in Fairfield, Connecticut.

# # #

 About Whole Foods Market^®
Founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market (wholefoodsmarket.com, NASDAQ: WFMI), is the leading natural and organic food retailer. As America’s first national certified organic grocer, Whole Foods Market was named “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store” by Health magazine. The company’s motto, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet”™ captures its mission to ensure customer satisfaction and health, Team Member excellence and happiness, enhanced shareholder value, community support and environmental improvement. Thanks to the company’s more than 53,000 Team Members, Whole Foods Market has been ranked as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America by FORTUNE magazine for 13 consecutive years. In fiscal year 2009, the company had sales of $8 billion and currently has more than 280 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Visitors attending Fairfield’s Earth Day Celebration will have an opportunity to get a broad view of the many services and products available to them in and near Fairfield. Town departments, schools, organizations and businesses will all be represented. There will be family entertainment
throughout the day featuring music and magic.

Visitors will also get the answer to the question “How Green is Our Town?” To help answer that question, all exhibitors will submit a green initiative to www.GreenTowns.com that they are currently involved with, or an initiative they would like to start. To support the effort of collecting and sharing these local initiatives, Fairfield’s Earth Day Celebration is partnering with Fairfield-based AmericanTowns.com and its new project, GreenTowns, which celebrates local initiatives and shares them both locally and nationally.

FEDC Chair Larry Kaley said, “We are looking forward to this important celebration that highlights the people and projects that are making an environmental difference in Fairfield. We encourage the entire town to participate.”

In an effort to encourage as many citizens to participate in this annual hometown event, the Fairfield Earth Day Committee has dropped the registration fee for Fairfield organizations, businesses and individuals. The only requirement is that all exhibitors have an educational message and submit a green initiative that they are involved with or would like to start and share that message at the Earth Day event.

Our 2009 Directory

To see who was sponsoring, exhibiting, speaking and performing, click on the Directory below.
Read some compelling environmental facts.
Learn some of the things you can do to help protect the envirnonment.

Please see posted information at the event for most up to date information

10:15 OPENING CEREMONY by Fairfield’s First Selectman Ken Flatto in the Main Gym.

LECTURE SCHEDULE

Lecture Room:

10:30   An Organic Teaching Farm in Fairfield ? Pam Jones/Jody Eisemann

11:30   A Local Food Panel                                                     Analiese Paik   

2:00     Bees into Battle                                                            Win Baum         

3:00     Organic Gardening Simplified                          Nick Mancini    

Court Yard (Lecture Room if weather is inclement):

1:00       Future of Transportation – a panel discussion.      

Moderator -  Jim Motavalli
James Boncek – has turned his toyota Tercel into an Electric Car
Eric Mitchell  – Smart Center Fairfield
Megan Pomeroy – United Illuminating
Chris Colquit – General Motors

Sure to be an exciting and informative panel discussion on our current transportation behaviors and the prescription for the future for attaining sustainability in a way we should choose to move ourselves, and the alternatives that will available to us.  Be sure to attend this engaging discussion by our panel of transportation experts.                                           

Cooking Room :

 Ongoing demos begin at 10 am. Stop in any time! Follow the signs to the cooking area

Coordinator and Speaker – Amie Hall  

 11:00    Sustainable Eating       

 11:30    The Green Lunch Box                                          

   1:30    Square Foot Gardening in the Curriculum        

   2:30    Square Foot Gardening – The Basics            

10:00 am- 4:00 pm – Earth Food Tour, Self Guided, Ongoing.  Visit 5 interactive family friendly stations that will expand your food knowledge and build comfort in your kitchen. Topics include Glorious Greens, Great Grains, The Mighty Bean, Flour Power and The Green Lunch Box.

ENTERTAINMENT SCHEDULE                                                      

Time               Court Yard (Small Gym and Corridor if weather is inclement)                                                                         

10:45                   Mike Dougherty & the All Star Energy Band

11:15                     Save our Trees-Reading by Persephone  Ocasio                                                                                       

                                Trashy Fashions                                                               

11:45                     Drumming Circle                                              

12:30                     Trashy Fashions                                                                                                                                                              

2:00                       Drumming Circle                                                              

2:45                       Mike Dougherty & the All Star Energy Band                                                                                               

                        Main Entrance (Outside)

                        Solar Powered Music                                                                                                                                 

11:15 -2:00         Lisa Furman Band                      

2:00                       FFld House Band                             

2:45 - 3:45           Lisa Furman Band                                            

Lecture Series Speakers:

Pam Jones and Jody Eisemann, former Westporters, re-met as Fairfield residents and found they had numerous interests in common, including the preservation and restoration of their local environment. Both of them believe that the earth is facing an unparalleled environmental crisis of resources, out of control pollution and most importantly the safety and security of our food sources. Pam and Jody believe that learning to grow your own food is a simple solution to lowering the area’s carbon footprint, accessing really healthy food and is real security for people everywhere. They have spent the past year pursuing the idea of creating a town owned organic teaching farm as a way to help create a sustainable future for our town and our children.

Analiese Paik is a local/sustainable food advocate and founder of the Fairfield Green Food Guide, an online consumer resource for finding local and sustainably grown food and connecting with the green food community. Launched in January 2009, fairfieldgreenfoodguide.com features a blog, database of green food resources, event calendar and e-newsletter that empower consumers to eat fresh, local and sustainable food in Fairfield County. Analiese organizes documentary food film events to benefit not-for-profits, and is a regular monthly guest on News Channel 8’s Good Morning Connecticut show.

Win Baum, Fairfield Backyard Beekeeper, is back this year and will talk about the perils honeybees and fellow pollinators, like bats and butterflies, are facing from chemical pesticides and other man-made foes.  Win and his wife, Stefanie, have been keeping bees in their backyard Fairfield apiary since 1992.  Win’s experience with honeybees and other pollinators is sure to be informative and useful for gardeners of all types.

Nick Mancini will show you how to maintain a trouble free garden through good sanitation, crop selection, proper fertilization and Organic pest management. Nick is a Certified Master Gardener from the Cooperative Extension System of the University of Connecticut, specializing in organic vegetables, fruits and brambles, and past head Master Gardener of Vegetables and Tree Fruit at Bartlett Arboretum in Stamford, Connecticut. He teaches organic gardening at Norwalk Community College’s Extended Studies program and the Kathryn Croaning Child Development Laboratory School where they have developed an organic garden. Nick also teaches Organic Gardening at the Westport Continuing Education, Fairfield Continuing Education, Northeast Organic Farmers Association and lectures in garden clubs, horticultural societies and libraries throughout Connecticut and neighboring states.

Amie Hall – Amie Guyette Hall, is a certified health coach, Square Foot Gardening teacher and Founder of Fairfield’s Middle School Gardens.  Amie has helped our foods teachers develop a whole foods based curriculum. She connects children and families to their food, their community and the land through educational workshops and wellness programs in our schools and at a local farm.

by Eileen Weber

Take a close look at your garbage. Closer. A little closer. Stop right there. Now what do you see? If you happen to be at my house, it’s not a pretty picture. But seen through the eyes of some Fairfield students, what you throw out every day could be used to make a cute skirt or a strapless dress. Take that, Prada!

For the last four years, Fairfield’s Earth Day Celebration has proudly supported the Trashy Fashions group comprised of students from Fairfield Warde High School and Burr Elementary School. They work hard to create wearable garments made from such things as Capri Sun foil packets, yogurt cups, plastic bags, or even newspaper.

“It’s not really about the recycled material,” said Nancy Malafatopoulos, the FCS Department Liaison at Fairfield Warde High School. “It’s about the construction. These kids use braiding and pleating these materials. I’ve seen some of the kids take newspaper and crunch it up over and over again to make it more like a fabric.”

It doesn’t take much to come up with materials to use. A quick look around the house, and the kids bring in plenty of reusable items. “We let the kids use their imagination,” said Mei-Ling Uliasz, a second grade teacher from Burr who has been working closely with Malafatopoulos. “They use what they have at home.”

Coming from different schools on opposite ends of town, Uliasz and Matafatolpoulos came up with the Trashy Fashion idea simultaneously. Rather than work separately and possibly against each other, they decided to collaborate their efforts. They say it has made a difference with the children.

“It’s cute having the elementary school kids,” said Malafatopoulos. “It’s exciting to see the bonds between the kids.”

Uliasz said her students have the opportunity to learn from the older kids. “Her girls know how to sew,” said Uliasz of Malafatopoulos’s class. “They weave things like rice sacks. They throw a lot of craftsmanship into it.”

Malafatopoulos’s students have won national fashion awards in previous years for their work. “Only the top in their category in every state gets to go to the national competition,” she said. “Ours have always won ribbons.”

To find out what all the fuss is about, check out the Trashy Fashion show at Fairfield’s Earth Day Celebration this Saturday. See what the kids put together and see your trash in a whole new way!

Guess who’s turning 40 this year? Earth Day, and without the mid-life crisis! Since April 22, 1970, we’ve been celebrating a nationally recognized day that honors cleaner air, cleaner water, and saving our precious land. Come celebrate Fairfield’s Earth Day this year on Saturday, May 8th.

“Fairfield continues to be on the forefront of making smart energy choices that help save taxpayer dollars and reduce energy costs,” said Fairfield’s First Selectman Ken Flatto. “Our community is fortunate to have many active and dedicated volunteer residents and committees, such as the Earth Day Committee, that provide fun and educational programs like the popular Earth Day event in May at Fairfield Warde High School for our residents to enjoy and learn from.”

Fairfield is just one of many towns in Connecticut that have made significant progress over the years. In this state, we’ve made great strides in preserving open space and protecting farmland and wildlife. We’ve worked hard to clean up our beaches and our surrounding waterways making Connecticut a healthier and greener place to live. Earth Day’s 40th anniversary is a time to recognize our environmental progress at the same time addressing the challenges that lay ahead of us.

Climate change, landfills, the perils of plastic, fossil fuel dependence. These are just a few of the topics we face that still need a big change. But with growing interest, residents are taking environmentalism seriously. Prior to Earth Day’s inception, founded by former Senator Gaylord Nelson and EPA administrator William K. Reilly, there were no regulations protecting the environment. Everything was disposable. Why recycle, when you can throw it away and buy a new one? Factories spewed gunk into the air. Toxic waste dumped into waterways with little care. Protecting open space wasn’t a consideration.
But today, being environmentally friendly doesn’t stop with the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the land we build on. It also includes the food we eat. The organic food movement has seen farmers’ markets blossom one by one. Here in Fairfield, we have two summer farmers’ markets and one in winter! Our Community Supported Agriculture programs have popped up and many of them are completely filled long before the growing season starts.

With pioneers of the food movement like renowned chef and restauranteur Alice Waters, who founded Chez Panisse in 1971 with an organic garden in the backyard, and Michael Pollan, professor and oft-quoted author of such works as The Omnivore’s Dilemma, what our industrialized nation has done to our food has outraged the environmentalist in all of us. From over-processed foods to the horrible things cattle are fed, the food industry looks a whole lot more organic on this side of the new century.

For the last two years, the bad economy has been on everyone’s mind. It’s much easier to Reduce-Reuse-Recycle when our belts need to be tightened. But now, the economy is on the upswing. In all the regions of the state, especially here in Fairfield, residents are gearing up for Earth Day events that will help us remember being green shouldn’t be driven by the economy. It should be driven by our need to do what’s right for the planet. From beach clean ups to county fairs to recycling drives, Connecticut is not afraid to show its green side.

Join the Town of Fairfield and show your green side. Fairfield’s Earth Day Celebration is on Saturday, May 8th from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m at Fairfield Warde High School at 755 Melville Avenue. Be sure to visit other pages on our website to find out more including Exhibitor information and events planned. Music, food, fun, and educational programs await you! Come on down!

• Home Depot is BACK!  Bring the kid’s to the Children’s Workshop

• Catch the latest “Trashy Fashion” styles designed and modeled by Fairfield’s finest Fashionistas!

• Discover Environmental and Nutritional Alternatives…

• Visit over 90 Exhibitors!  Learn what we can all do ……  to MAKE A DIFFERENCE! 

 

With a growing awareness of global warming and its
associated environmental, health, financial and moral issues, 
join us for the celebration at Fairfield Warde High School.   BE the DIFFERENCE!    

•  For general information or questions regarding exhibiting/advertising  contact Larry Kaley, co-chairman.  

• To become a Sponsor or a Supporter, contact Larry Kaley.

• For information on solid waste and re-cycling initiatives in Fairfield, as well as information on the most recent Local, State and Federal re-cycling policies, please contact Mike Zembruski, co-chairman of Fairfield Earth Day and Director, Town of Fairfield Solid Waste & Recycling.