Earth Day event lays focus on our food supply

What’s on your plate for Earth Day? Inspired by a nationally and locally growing sustainable food and gardening movement, Sustainable Highland Park has chosen the theme, “Sustainable Food, Sustainable Community, Sustainable Planet” for its annual Earth Day Extravaganza.

From 6 pm to 9 pm, Thursday, April 22, Highland Park High School’s gym and cafeteria will be providing adults, teens, and children with interactive learning and fun, focused on meeting the borough’s ‘Green Goals:’ Healthy People, Healthy Environment, Strong Community, and Fairness and Equity.

Partnering with the Extravaganza this year is the Board of Health’s Vickie White Free Community Health Fair, now in its ninth year carrying on the mission of the Highland Park activist who founded and chaired the health fair for many years, and also was a co-founder of the Edible Gardens Project. The Health Fair began in 2002 as an effort to address health disparities and the health needs of the community.

There will be exhibits about school and community gardening, food security, composting, soil testing, rain barrels and water quality. Take part in hands-on workshops, arts and crafts, and Sustainable Highland Park’s Green Challenge. Visitors can see the new school gardens, taste delicious sustainable foods, enjoy a cup of fair trade organic coffee, get a massage, and take advantage of free health screenings and checkups.

Also joining the Extravaganza will be Food & Water Watch, with information on triclosan, the antibacterial chemical that the borough and many local businesses have pledged to avoid using. Food & Water Watch will host a workshop on how to make environmentally-friendly cleaners for the home.

This year, Sustainable Highland Park and Food & Water Watch are encouraging Extravaganza visitors to forego plastic water bottles. Indulge instead in the free-flowing, filtered water available at the event. There will be information available on the health impacts of plastic chemicals and environmental impacts of the tons of abandoned plastic water bottles.

Last year, more than 150 people signed up to meet the Green Challenge 2009. Among the 2010 Green Challenges, visitors can pledge to use triclosan-free cleaners, add more locally-produced food to their diets, drink tap or filtered water instead of bottled water, and fight community hunger through support of the local food pantry. Highland Park’s Food Pantry will be on hand to help make that Green Challenge easy by collecting donations of non-perishable foods at the event.

Event cosponsors include Main Street Highland Park, Who Is My Neighbor, the Edible Gardens Project, Food & Water Watch, the Highland Park Environmental Commission, Board of Health, Planning Commission, and Schools, and the Borough of Highland Park. Funding is provided by the Fund for Highland Park and Save Open Space.