Story by Stephanie Lambirth
Photos by Nick Bynum
This Saturday the scenic River Edge plaza residing outside the Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB) building will turn into a bustling “Earth Action Arena.” In celebration of Earth Day 2013 EWEB has invited innovators, activists, educators, entertainers, and all around earth lovers to raise awareness about environmental issues and solutions. This year’s event, titled Climate for Change, will take place on April 20 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 500 East Fourth Avenue in Eugene.
This year’s event will include a film festival and lecture series focusing on climate change awareness and action. The film portion features documentaries, such as Island President and The 11th Hour, as well as interviews with climate change experts. The lecture series will include talks from activists, experts, students, and presentations from schools involved with Partners for Sustainable Schools—an organization that helps schools “go green.” Other attractions include musical performances, a plant sale by the Lane County Master Gardener Association, and a bag swap—where plastic bags can be exchanged for a re-usable one. In addition, the Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts (MECCA) will provide arts and crafts activities using re-purposed materials.
“Our mission is to divert materials that might otherwise be thrown away and make them available for re-use and to offer low cost arts education and experiences to the community,” Mija Andrade, MECCA’s director, says. “I think that there are so many great things about the Earth Day celebration—it’s educational, you can see what other people in the community are doing so you can learn and be inspired, and it’s also just a celebration, it’s a great time to celebrate the Earth.”
This year, MECCA is promoting Eugene’s upcoming plastic bag ban with a station where people can make their own re-usable shopping bags. “We get a lot of materials from Mountain Rose Herbs and Hummingbird Wholesale,” Andrade explains. “They bring us their big Mylar spice bags and the ones that are woven, so we will be using those to make smaller bags that can be used for shopping. We will also have activities where people and families can come and make 3-D or collage pet portraits.”
For the past fifteen years several different organizations have collaborated to produce the Earth Day celebration and activities, choosing to work together instead of each having separate events.
“We decided it made a lot more sense to come together and have a larger event and we could all kind of pitch in,” John Femal, community education coordinator at EWEB, says.
EWEB, the event’s host, is a publicly owned utility with a long history of conservation efforts and community involvement.
“The neat thing about a public utility is that it really can be more of a reflection of the community,” Femal says. “Folks in Eugene have consistently told us that they like conservation, energy efficiency, and they want more renewables, and the utility has responded to that.”
EWEB focuses strongly on programs that allow its customers to conserve energy and support sustainable efforts for the future. One such program is Greenpower, which provides incentives to customers who install solar panels on their homes or businesses. Greenpower also allows customers to contribute to renewable energy projects, research, and education by adding a premium to their monthly utility bill. Some of the funds from this premium are used for EWEB’s Greenpower grant, which community members and organizations can apply for. Greenpower participants get to cast a ballot to determine the grant’s winner, which will be announced at the Earth Day celebration.
Eugene is traditionally seen as a very green community with many eco-minded citizens, and EWEB being publicly owned contributes to the utility’s involvement with sustainable and renewable energy projects. “The biggest thing about a public utility to me is that we really are here to serve the public and not shareholders,” Femal says. “There is real feedback from the community that comes back to the organization and the leadership here, and they pay attention to it.”
To learn more about Eugene’s oldest publicly owned utility and about sustainable solutions for the planet, visit the Earth Action Arena at this year’s Climate for Change festival, Saturday April 20, 2013 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
