Knoxville's 12th annual Earth Day Event, EarthFest 2011 will take place on Saturday, April 16 from 10am to 5pm at Pellissippi State Community College. Admission and parking are free.
EarthFest is a "Zero-Waste Event" and organizers, sponsors and volunteers will provide recycling and composting opportunities for everything distributed at the event. There will be not trash cans on site. Last year at EarthFest '10 with 9 thousand attendees, we recycled or composted over 880 lb. of materials and only 6.50 lb. went to the landfill from the entire event.
EarthFest has had a major impact on the community promoting environmental awareness and opportunities for individuals to reduce their environmental footprint on East Tennessee.
EarthFest events this year include a youth environmental learning area with projects like Enviro-Scape: Interactive water quality demonstrations for all ages.Arts and Crafts: Reusable Shopping Bags, Pet Rocks, Coloring Books. Creepy Crawlers: Kids will dig for worms in compost piles. Recycling Relays, Seed Planting, and much more!
Speaking sessions at the Green Living Tent include:
ARE WE TOO CLEAN? 11 - 11:50 a.m. A public health panel discussing the results of our society's "obsession" with fighting germs on the environment and on our health.
LIVABLE COMMUNITIES Noon - 12:50p.m. A panel of local experts on developing sustainable communities that improve neighborhoods, our health and our environment.
LOCAL ACTIONS; GLOBAL RAMIFICATIONS 1 - 1:50 p.m. A panel of local experts will discuss how our decisions at a local level have farther reaching impacts than most of us know.
There will be food vendors, environmental exhibitors, art and craft vendors, music, a used household mercury thermometer exchange, and clean fuels vehicles. Recycle Yourself Recycle LIFE with MEDIC Regional Blood Center Bloodmobile.
Free Disc Golf Demonstrations, KUB Exchanges Old Bulbs for New Fluorescents, Keep Knoxville Beautiful and Mercy Health Partners are encouraging people to exchange their excess plastic shopping bags and bottles for an earth-friendly reusable cloth bag, Soles4Souls Inc. shoe collecton.
For more information on times and events visit
www.knox-earthfest.org.
EarthFest gives back to the community, donating proceeds to fund activities such as the purchase of plants and trees in the James Agee Park and funding community creek litter programs at UT and Beaver Creek.
Major sponsors of EarthFest this year are: City of Knoxville Office of Solid Waste, City of Knoxville Water Engineering, Knox County Office of Solid Waste, Knox County Stormwater Management, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Waste Connections, WATE Channel 6, B97.5, Natural Awakenings, Event Rentals, Knology, Alcoa, and Pellissippi State Technical Community College.