Conservation fever drives swap event
2008 launches H.P. Spring Fling
Anne Barron
for The Mirror

You may notice piles of stuff on people's front lawns around Highland Park this week-end. Please stop and take anything that interests you.

Welcome to Highland Parkís first annual Spring Fling, a weekend of adaptive re-use made personal. The project is brought to you by the hard work and dreams of the Laurano family of South Second Avenue.

The Spring Fling is dedicated to reducing the volume of Highland Parkers' weekly trash. The less we throw away, the lower our fees paid to the various landfills that receive our trash. And with each item we find to use without buying new, the smaller our consumer footprint.

How to do the April 5/6th Spring Fling

To register your stuff, or find other people's stuff -

visit groups.yahoo.com and search for the group called "hpspringfling";

call 732.985-5484 to register;

grab a map of participating locations on the large boards announcing "Spring Fling" along the main street next week;

and

put your stuff out front on Friday night or Saturday morning. Make sure you clearly label it as "Spring Fling" goods. You don't want to lose any lawn ornaments!

After the weekend, you can retrieve what is left over, or set it aside for trash, packaged as required by the Department of Public Works. Click on "Borough Departments" at www.hpboro.com for more information on trash disposal, or call 732.247-9379.

You may also consider donating the stuff to the Irving School PTO for its annual Garage Sale. For more information on that, contact Susan Powell at ripple95@verizon.net or 732.339-0451.

One Family's Work

I first heard about this great project from former councilwoman Fern Goodhart and became intrigued. I bumped into Marc and Beth Laurano at one of the boroughís perennial street fairs and they sold me on the concept. The Highland Park Green Community Working Group and the borough Environmental Commission endorsed the event enthusiastically, as it matches with our mission to reduce borough waste.

This is most definitely a family affair. The concept has been created and wholly directed by the Lauranos. Marc, a local realtor, has made his business resources available and reached out to other businesses for financial support, while Beth worked on the website, Rose designed the postcard, and Mary and Zach worked the schools and near-by businesses, gaining the support in particular of Countrywide Loans and the Window & Door Outlet.

The Laurano family has been practicing a conservation ethic for years. Rose and Mary describe how they have been taught to conserve water and energy: "Even leaving a light bulb on for more than three seconds is a waste of energy," Rose declares, citing a Mythbusters episode that debunked the belief that leaving a light burning uses less energy than turning it on and off.

Spring Fling grew out of a short play Marc, Rose and Mary created and performed last year for younger audiences. "The Recyling Machine" -- the props of course are all recycled items-- had its premiere last year and has been booked again for a repeat performance at the Reformed Church. Talk about the town-wide garage sale led them to research town-wide recycling, also known in some places as FreeCycle, a web-based free exchange of goods (www.freecycle.org). They discovered that New Brunswick and Middlesex County had active online communities organized around consumer re-use. The family decided to create a "land-based" exchange (Marc's description) in our town.

The Lauranos intend that the Spring Fling will become a local April tradition, akin to the Town-wide Garage Sale and the Farmers Market. Along with many thanks to Marc, Beth, Rose, Mary, and Zach Laurano for all their hard work, I too hope that turning "one person's trash to another person's treasure!" becomes an annual event, supported by residents and town officials as integral to the greening of Highland Park.

For more information, e-mail hpspringfling@yahoo.com, or call Marc at 732.985-5484.