BRICK – Despite rain in the forecast, residents came out to the annual Green Fair to learn new initiatives and make a difference environmentally.
The 13th annual Green Fair was held outdoors at the at the Bob Anstett Cultural Arts Center located on Herbertsville Road. The goal of the event is to celebrate environmental stewardship, sustainability, conservation, and green living in Brick.
Every year, the Fair has a soft theme that many of the vendors follow. This year, the theme was “Think Green, Save Green” which highlighted simple, budget-friendly ways to live sustainably and make a positive impact on the planet and your wallet.
Vin Palmieri, Brick Township Environmental Commission Secretary, said a main feature of this year’s event was showcasing the Township’s Economic Development Plan through NJDCA.
“The DCA are here today gathering input from the community and also conducting some surveys as well, and giving some presentations,” Palmieri noted. “In addition, we also have the Buy In Brick program here and we want to have as many residents be able to sign up in conjunction with that.”
Palmieri explained how the Township is currently working on and developing more green initiatives.
“We actually wrote our community energy plan, which is initiative based and it’s actually a list of incentives, and there’s timelines on when we will be able to implement them. It could be new charging stations or it could be electrifying our fleet, things of that nature, so that’s what we’re really trying to push for,” Palmieri said.
Some local businesses, nonprofits, and organizations that participated in this year’s Green Fair included the Brick MUA, Brick Township Shade Tree Commission, Save Barnegat Bay and more. The event housed nearly 40 vendors, a new one being Rewild New Jersey Community Cooperative (RNJCC) – a platform building a grassroots movement for state-wide community rewilding.
“New Jersey is borderline a space that is most at risk for losing its wild spirit, both with people and with land,” RNJCC Founder Francesca Mundrick said. “What this is really all about is not only having people, individual residents and citizens, rewild space, like rewild nature on their properties and bring back nature to full fruition in New Jersey. It’s also about social and spiritual change and transformation for the people. It’s about thinking more about practical skills, self-sufficiency, sustainability, on a more constructive localized level, to make to make change actually sit and work.”
A major part of the Green Fair is the involvement of students from Brick Schools. Fourth graders from Midstreams Elementary School’s green team worked on several different projects throughout the school year. They teamed up with TerraCycle to collect Little Bites wrappers and applesauce pouches to recycle. They hosted woods and beach cleanups as well as collected shells which they decorated with positive green messages like “we don’t own the Earth to share it.”
Lanes Mill Elementary School’s green team collected over 350 plastic cereal bowls in just two weeks so that they wouldn’t end up in landfills. Then they shared an endless number of ideas on how to reuse the bowls, like to organize Legos or to grow a plant.
“I think that a lot of times with the environment, things are always evolving and the world is changing and communities change and it’s always important to continue educating, even things that have been mainstays throughout years, whether it be recycling or even things that are newer such as sustainability,” Palmieri said. “Between those two, I think that being able to continue to educate and have all the schools here today is really important for us because a lot of the schools and the students that are part of these schools continue to live in Brick. Eventually you know, 20, 30 years from now, they may be tabling at this event. That’s really what’s most important is to continue to have this event for as long as we can and really do it as well as we can.”
