On Saturday, October 3, people will notice that they are not alone in their support of green initiatives. Since the Greening of West Windsor (GroWW) environmental fair was held for the first time last year, organizers of the event say that there will be more presentations, more exhibits, and more activities geared toward promoting sustainable goals and showcasing the township’s environmental efforts to date.
And the organizers hope to continue expanding. Attendees at the fair, held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the West Windsor Community Farmers’ Market at Vaughn Drive off Alexander Road, will particularly notice students’ contributions. Students from all parts of the community, including the high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, as well as the Boy and Girls Scouts, will be participating this year.
“The largest sector of increase is from our own personal citizens and the groups that they run, and the commitment of the school groups who will be putting on exhibits and actively participating in educating the population,” said Heidi Kleinman, who chairs the fair. “That, to me, is what I’m really excited about.”
“People are doing things on their own in their individual homes” that are sustainable, Kleinman said, “but they’re not necessarily sure which businesses they can choose from that might support their own personal commitment.” She says she hopes the fair will make it easier for them to get this information.
Sponsored by the township, the fair is hosted by the farmers’ market, West Windsor Environmental Commission, Friends of West Windsor Open Space (FOWWOS), the West Windsor Arts Council, and the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance. During the event, exhibitors will line up on tables throughout the parking lot to provide environmental information and describe their particular approaches to curb adverse climate change, reduce greenhouse gas, minimize solid waste, and limit the negative environmental impacts of everyday life.
Dutch Neck students will have a display about their school’s Community garden, as well as a sample of the produce. The Enviro-Kids from Millstone River School will be presenting their own green projects, including the Tree Project — through which the students raised enough money to plant 10,000 trees in India — the Mechanical Pencil project, a Trash to Treasure art show, and the Enviro Stations fair.
Meanwhile, Community Middle School’s “Athletes for Action” community service group will be collecting gently used sports equipment at the fair to be distributed to area organizations that provide athletic opportunities for underprivileged children. Cleats and equipment for baseball, football, soccer, lacrosse, and basketball will be collected. The group, which formed last spring, successfully ran a food drive for the Plainsboro Pantry and Home Front that collected more than 1,000 non-perishable items. The group is currently looking for additional ways to help in the community, including working with the Bike Alliance and coordinating a mittens/gloves drive in the late fall.
At Grover Middle School, the Environmental Club, led by Leslie Bush, will have a table at the fair to administer a “Fifteen Ways to Go Green” pledge, in which visitors commit to being environmentally friendly. In addition, the club will have a recycling game to promote recycling as a beneficial activity. The club will also be selling pencils made from recycled newspapers and will describe their efforts to save the environment with posters they created.
Mounica Chitrapu, a freshman at North, will explain how rain barrels can be used to conserve water, as rain water, in many cases, is cleaner and less corrosive on plumbing than filtered water, and can be used to water plants, as an emergency water supply, or even as shower water.
Meanwhile, South’s GREEN CmPS team will continue its involvement in the fair by holding a piggy bank activity craft, in which children are welcome to transform yogurt containers into creative and artistic piggy banks. At this exhibit, the team will also be distributing recycling bins to West Windsor residents with a proof of address.
The commitment to recycling was the initial effort that led to the GroWW fair from the very beginning, says Kleinman. Even though the population in the township is rising, the amount of collected recycling is down. Kleinman says that through talking to people, what she learned was that eventually, the recycling containers provided to residents break, and residents do not know how to replace them, so they stop recycling. “They are free, and we will be giving them out to registered West Windsor residents,” Kleinman says. She also said that the more the town recycles, the more the state pays back to the township to offset garbage costs. “In order to save, we need to increase recycling,” she said. “As people learn about that collection, they can equate it to their taxes.”
South’s Environmental Club will be promoting awareness about green opportunities in West Windsor, and music groups from both high schools will be providing on-stage entertainment at the fair, including the Green Anthem, a composition by Julie Lyonn Lieberman. Both orchestral and vocal students will be performing the anthem (see story, page 1).
The Boy Scouts, meanwhile, led by Tony Vinci, will be holding an exhibit that explains the benefits of composting for the environment, homes, and the community. Girl Scout Troop 70600 will describe their efforts in clearing and marking trails at the Rogers Preserve last year and will use a trail map to inform visitors about all of the trails available to them at the Rogers Preserve. In addition, they will be handing out seeds on paper, ready for planting.
In addition to all of the student exhibitors, there will be many more venues for healthy lunch choices, and new vendors with innovative ideas. For example, one company, called Natural Pools, is a pool company that installs swimming pools consisting of a deep end in which people swim and a shallow end in which they place plants, with the idea that the plants are cleaning the water, Kleinman says.
In addition, Kleinman says that more Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified home contractors will be available at the fair, as well as BP Solar. And various governmental officials from the local, county, and state level, as well as various other groups, will also be on hand to discuss green initiatives and show their displays.
Master Gardeners of Mercer County will have a bug display, with magnifying glasses available to study the bugs. New Jersey Audubon Society Plainsboro Preserve will have a live snake exhibit. Healthy You Healthier Planet will have an eco-friendly magic show at 1:15 p.m. The group will also be raffling a basket with more than $2,000 in green products. Children can make art mats from recycled plastic bags at the WW Arts Council tent, while the WW Bicycle & Pedestrian Alliance will have a Bike Rodeo.
Meanwhile, the West Windsor Environmental Commission will help kids make bird feeders from pinecones, peanut butter, and birdseed, and the Friends of West Windsor Open Space will have a “Save the Pumpkin Patch” bean bag toss game. And Simply Living Healthy, a health food counselor, will have a food detective game, with a basket of healthy food and a basket of junk food, spurring conversation about what makes the food in the healthy food basket healthy. The Healthy Food basket will be raffled at the end of the fair.
Recycling Initiatives. The fair will also feature recycling stations to collect portable rechargeable batteries and cell phones, gently-used clothing and small household goods, documents for shredding, electronics, eyeglasses and gently used sports equipment.
When the battery can no longer hold a charge, it can and should be recycled, stated a press release from GroWW. Batteries collected will be recycled through the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation. Wet cell (car/motorcycle) batteries will not be collected.
In addition to batteries, residents can also bring their documents and manila folders to be shredded at the fair, and paper clips, staples, and rubber bands may be left on the documents. The township, with funding from the NJ Clean Communities Council, has arranged for a shredding truck at the fair.
The township’s Department of Public Works will be collecting used electronics including CPUs, modems, printers, keyboards, mouses, fax machines, copiers, circuit boards, televisions, monitors, scanners, electrical wire, stereo equipment, laptops and laptop peripherals, phones, telecommunications, networking equipment, VCRs and camera equipment. Public Works will also have additional yellow and green recycling tubs for West Windsor residents. Residents should carry their driver’s license as proof of residence.
The Rescue Mission of Trenton will collect gently used adult and children’s clothes and small house wares. These will be distributed free through their Emergency Services program, or sold at their thrift store to benefit the mission.
Prescription eyeglasses and non-prescription sunglasses can be donated to the West Windsor Lions Club for the Lions Recycle for Sight program. The collected glasses are cleaned and prepared for distribution in developing countries where eye care is often unaffordable and inaccessible.
Other Events. When the GroWW Fair is over, events promoting its message are not. In the weekend following the event, a movie called “Flow: For the Love of Water” will be shown in the West Windsor Library on Saturday, October 10, at 7:30 p.m.
The 2008 documentary film, directed by Irena Salina, is described as an awareness-raising, often troubling journey to explore the global consequences of corporate marketing of water. “In diverse communities in Latin America and Asia, the privatisation of water supplies has led to prices for safe drinking water that in effect cut off access to large groups of the poor,” a press release stated. “Closer to home, in the US, the somewhat dubious demand for bottled water generates waste for landfills and transforms public resources from remote communities into corporate thirst-quenchers for the masses.”
Presented by the West Windsor Arts Council, refreshments and discussion will follow the film. The speaker, Steve Spayd, will bring a local perspective to the global concerns involving drinking water. As a hydrogeologist for the Department of Environmental Protection, his specialty is well water pollution and the effects of arsenic on water. Also known as Farmer Steve, he is the purveyor of organic microwavable popcorn with no added fats, which he and his wife cultivate on their farm in Ringoes.
This program is partly funded by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts through the Mercer County Cultural & Heritage Commission. The event is free with a suggested contribution of $5.
GroWW organizers are working to expand their events to include a Garden Tour, in which the organized walking or biking tour would connect public and private gardens within West Windsor. The tour route, organizers anticipate, would conceivably pass by the West Windsor Community Gardens, the township’s Arboretum, Zaitz nature trails, Millstone trails, and the Schenck Farmstead, to highlight the town’s diverse environment.
The organizing committee is hoping people will nominate their neighbors’ gardens or volunteer their own to be included. And organizers hope that the tour would include public and private buildings that exemplify sustainable building practices and energy conservation, like the design of the Senior Center’s expansion project, which includes new solar collectors.
For the spring, GroWW organizers are also exploring the idea of holding a “freecycle” event. The idea is instead of throwing out a large item, like a piece of furniture, you post it on a website for someone to take and, essentially, reuse, or recycle.
Kleinman says she hopes organizers can put together a township-wide freecycle day so that residents can put items they no longer want out onto their driveways for people to take or buy. She says organizers will be able to create a map and lists of addresses “so that people who were interested in this would know where to drive around town,” she said. “This is the West Windsor version of a freecycle flea market.”
