3/30/07- As seen in The KeyS NEWS
Make Green Living Expo part of your weekend
Following closely on the heels of the well-attended Sierra Club Energy Film Festival in Key West, the Green Living and Energy Education (GLEE) Expo in Marathon on Saturday promises to be a cornucopia of ideas, information, products and inspiration for green living and clean energy use.
Thirty-two workshops are being offered on subjects ranging from "Water Smart Irrigation" and "Green Finance" to "PhotoVoltaics for Building Pros." On display will be cars using alternative fuels -- electric, hybrid, biodiesel and solar- powered. Also displayed will be a host of solar energy collectors and water conservation solutions. Fifty vendors will dispense conservation information and sell products. Even the food will be organic.
The expo is a fitting encore to the weeklong Sierra Club Energy Film Festival, which was a series of 20 energy-related films screened at the Tropic Cinema earlier this month. The films showed the mechanics of global warming, how it already is affecting the life and health of people all over the world, and strategies for changing to cleaner energy sources. One film showed how low-lying islands -- the Florida Keys, North Carolina's Outer Banks and Pacific Ocean atolls were examples -- are adversely affected by rising seas levels caused by faster-melting glaciers. The festival ended with a panel discussion of local and visiting experts discussing local implications of global warming, and an Energy Summit generating discussion among key decision-makers on planning for the future.
The Sierra Club Film festival and GLEE are marvelous examples of what a handful of individuals can set in motion. Jody Smith Williams -- a Key West member of the Sierra Club, executive assistant of the Healthy Start Coalition and former volunteer and event coordinator at the Tropic Cinema -- saw a blurb on the Sierra Club's Web site announcing the availability of the Energy Film Festival material and asking for volunteers to coordinate it in local communities. Williams volunteered, enlisted a cadre of helpers and sponsors and scheduled the films in conjunction with the GLEE expo.
GLEE is the outgrowth of work by Diane Marshall and John Hammerstrom in designing their green home in Key Largo. They found that local contractors and building supply companies had little experience with green construction, so they traveled the country and researched alternate energy, materials and products to build an energy-efficient, non-polluting home. In fact, they were the first to sell excess solar-generated electricity back to the Florida Keys Electric Co-op.
The couple's project triggered a cascade of interest, and they were beset with requests for information about green building. Realizing the difficulty in getting the information, Marshall approached Doug Gregory at the Monroe County Extension Service about helping to make the information more available. Marshall, Gregory and others put on the first green energy exposition in 2005.
This year's GLEE expo is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at Stanley Switlik School, 3400 Overseas Highway in Marathon. It promises to be a convergence of like-minded residents who increasingly are discovering the importance of treading lightly on our planet. We urge residents to make the event part of their weekend plans.-- The Citizen