From tree giveaways to an initiative to save quail habitat, and consumer offerings ranging from earrings made of recycled paper to a podcast celebrating the intersection of hip hop, gardening, and whiskey, the 16th annual Northwest Indiana Earth Day event at the Porter County Expo Center Saturday was a mash-up of all things environmental.
An all-ages crowd of around 1,000 was expected throughout the event that offered over 60 vendors. After receiving a free, reusable tote to carry around all the educational materials they might collect, visitors were met at the door by folks collecting signatures in support of proposed legislation limiting single-use plastics.
Kim Moor, of Griffith, was one of the first in line to select a free seedling at the first booth run by the event sponsor, the Recycling & Waste Reduction District of Porter County. The Department of Natural Resources Nursery had provided common chokecherry, black oak or Eastern white pine for people to choose from. Moor had left her booth with the Gibson Woods Chapter of the Wild Ones to claim hers.
She said her real job for the day was to educate people on all the benefits of native plants and the efforts of the Hammond-based Wild Ones to help them.
“It’s good for biodiversity,” she said of the mission. “Certain insects have evolved with native plants. Without milkweed, there’d be no monarch butterfly.”
Habitat for bobwhite quail and Chinese ring-necked pheasant was the focus of Scott Palla, who showed off the live birds at the Izaak Walton League of Porter County booth. Bobwhites are a species native to Indiana.
While the Chinese ring-necked pheasant are not native, having been brought here in the 1880s, they are of concern since they share a habitat with the quail. Palla said that while the birds aren’t endangered, the ground-nesting species lost a lot of habitat “when farmers took out hedgerows” and began ditch-to-roadway farming, not leaving any buffer strips for the birds to use.
Private enterprises such as U.S. Steel, Pratt Industries, Junkluggers and several solid waste management companies offered booths in between the many nonprofits educating attendees.
“We encourage vendors to have an environmental sustainability focus,” said Keri Marrs Barron, executive director of RWRDC of Porter County.
In the second row of booths, Girl Scouts from Northview Elementary in Valparaiso provided a visual of the life of things people commonly flush down the toilet and how they affect the quality of the water supply.
Third grader Katherine Keirn of Troop 35650 stood behind jars of items such as tampons and diapers floating in water to illustrate “tiny pieces of plastic that they can’t get out of the water and then you drink the water.”
Her sister, fourth grader Ellie Keirn, took the lesson further, standing behind a row of jars suspending items in water that are supposedly flushable but experts say are not.
“It says that it will dissolve, but this has been in here for about three days and it hasn’t done anything,” she said, indicating a “flushable” wipe suspended in a Ball jar of water.
A passerby makes a point to compliment the girls. “I saw your booth yesterday and it is one of the best,” she told them.
There was levity sprinkled throughout the fair to temper the seriousness of the environmental assault facing Mother Earth. Attendees could collect punches for attending booths for a chance to win a giant hand chair made of speckled recycled plastic.
One booth sported a Peanuts-inspired sign offering psychiatric counseling Lucy-style for distress over the environment. Perhaps the most colorful combatant for environmental distress was the hall of rain barrels decorated by more than 20 area schools; attendees could vote on their favorite.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
