Earth Day event at the Expo Center celebrates the environment and sustainability

From tree giveaways to an initiative to save quail habitat, and consumer offerings ranging from earrings made from recycled paper to a podcast celebrating the intersection of hip-hop, gardening and whiskey, the 16th annual Northwest Indiana Earth Day event in Porter County Expo Center Saturday was a mix of all things environmental.

An all-ages crowd of about 1,000 was expected at the event with more than 60 vendors. After receiving a free, reusable tote bag in which to carry all the educational materials they could collect, visitors were met at the door by people collecting signatures in support of proposed legislation limiting the use of single-use plastics.

Kim Moor of Griffith was among the first to pick out a free seedling at the first booth of the event’s sponsor, the Recycling & Waste Reduction District of Porter County. The Department of Natural Resources Nursery had provided common chokecherry, black oak or eastern white pine for people to choose from. Moor had left her stand at the Gibson Woods Chapter of the Wild Ones to claim hers.

She said her real job that day was to educate people about all the benefits of native plants and the efforts of the Hammond-based Wild Ones to help them.

“It’s good for biodiversity,” she said of the mission. “Certain insects have evolved with native plants. Without milkweed, there would be no monarch butterfly.”

The habitat of bobwhite quail and Chinese ring-necked pheasant was the focus of Scott Palla, who showed off the live birds at the Izaak Walton League booth in Porter County. Bobwhites are a species native to Indiana.

Although the Chinese collared pheasant is not native, having been brought here in the 1880s, they are of concern because they share habitat with quail. Palla said that while the birds are not endangered, the ground-nesting species has lost a lot of habitat “when farmers removed hedges” and started ditch-to-road farming, leaving no buffer strips for the birds to use .

Private companies such as US Steel, Pratt Industries, Junkluggers and several solid waste management companies offered booths among the many nonprofits training attendees.

“We encourage suppliers to focus on environmental sustainability,” said Keri Marrs Barron, executive director of RWRDC of Porter County.

In the second row of booths, Boy Scouts from Northview Elementary in Valparaiso provided an insight into the lifespan of things people commonly flush down the toilet and how they affect the quality of the water supply.

Third-grader Katherine Keirn of Troop 35650 stood behind jars of items such as tampons and diapers floating in water to illustrate “little pieces of plastic that they can’t get out of the water and then you drink the water.”

Her sister, fourth-grader Ellie Keirn, continued the lesson and stood behind a row of pots hanging objects in water that were supposedly flushable, but experts said were not.

“It says it will dissolve, but this has been here for about three days and it hasn’t done anything,” she said, pointing to a “flushable” wipe hanging in a ball jar of water.

A passerby makes a point to compliment the girls. “I saw your booth yesterday and it is one of the best,” she told them.

Frivolity was spread throughout the fair to temper the severity of the environmental assault Mother Earth was facing. Visitors could collect punches for visiting stands for a chance to win a giant hand chair made from speckled recycled plastic.

One booth featured a Peanuts-inspired sign offering Lucy-style psychiatric counseling for environmental issues. Perhaps the most colorful fighter against environmental problems was the hall decorated with rain barrels by more than twenty schools in the area; Visitors could vote for their favorite.

Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.