Earth Day is Monday but scores of people in the Longmont community alongside area businesses and nonprofits came together on Saturday to mark this year’s occasion.
Hundreds of people attended Longmont’s tenth annual Earth Day celebration at Timberline K-8. The event was organized in part by Sustainable Resilient Longmont. Gina Burrows was the event coordinator with SRL and explained that the nonprofit is “focused on the environment on a very local level, and has facilitated important projects like zero-waste Longmont and transitioning the city to all renewable energy by 2030.”
Organizers worked to move the event indoors thanks to cold temperatures and falling snow. Vendors set up booths in the school gymnasium and the lunch room provided a stage for performers throughout the day.
Musical performances kicked off at 10 a.m. with Doctor Noize offering an interactive show for children. Cory Cullinan is known as “Doctor Noize” and is a musical performer and member of the Stanford Alumni for Climate Change. He tries to integrate environmentally relevant themes into his performances while getting kids involved in singing, dancing and helping to make music.
“I have been involved in sustainability work for 17 or 18 years, so this is really a passion for me. It’s not just something I am here doing this weekend, but a cause I really believe in and I want to see kids appreciate, as well,” Cullinan said.
Later in the day, the Rocky Mountain Raptor program took to the stage. Attendees had an opportunity to get up close with different raptors and to learn more about these amazing birds and efforts to protect them and conserve their natural habitats.
Elsewhere, children were busy making arts and crafts, including painting recycled canvases donated by Circle Graphics and Firehouse Art Center. Artists were allowed to recreate one of two different models on their own canvas to take home.
SRL also hosted a clothing swap, giving people the chance to trade out clothing from their own closets for items brought by others. Part of the goal, Burrows said, was to “help people understand the role of ‘fast fashion’ and clothing waste, and how that impacts the environment, as well.”
Hope Bartlett is a water conservation specialist for the city and set up a booth to help people understand the local watershed.
“Only 3% of water on earth is freshwater. Of that 3%, less than 1% is available to us as usable drinking water. We want people to understand just how much water is available on planet Earth for living beings,” she said.
Nearby, the People and Pollinator Action Network set up a series of visuals to show the role of pollinators in creating food and helping to sustain agriculture and plant diversity.
“This year, the theme for Earth Day is ‘Planet Versus Plastic,’” Burrows said. “At the end of this event, we really hope people will think about how prevalent plastics are in our environment, and how to reduce their use. We have so many different people and organizations set up here to demonstrate all the ways in which individuals can take small steps to improve the environment, and we want everyone to take that with them.”
