My Earth Day Event ........Success or Failure??????

Well, this weekend I had 2 tables at the Earth Day weekend at the Aquarium of the Pacific. I felt so honored to be there with other groups such as the Sierra Club, Save the Bay, NOAA, on other major organizations. My tiny little non profit having been invited was a thrill.

Originally I had made a commitment to give away 11,000 lightbulbs to the people who came to the event. I contacted Southern California Edison about getting bulbs from their vendors. Their response was to tell me they couldn't help me at all and then they contacted the Aquarium and secured their own table, telling the Aquarium administration they would be giving out bulbs.. Not wanting to get into an ugly competitive thing I reasoned that being a huge corporation they would probably be better able to give away the bulbs. So I focused my efforts on giving out information about solar cooking and small solar.

Instead when I arrived on Saturday, I found that they were doing a bulb exchange program and had done virtually no advertising for it! As a result, few people brought in incandescent bulbs to exchange and this great opportunity to get thousands of CFLs in circulation was wasted. The Aquarium had over 7,000 people show up on Saturday alone. Southern California Edison shame on you!

There is an old saying that...... " people who say something is impossible to do, should get out of the way of those who are doing it." A sad and counter productive experience. I have to admit.... I am bitter. Although I would have financed the event out of my own pocket and was eager to do so. Edison felt the need to play one upmanship and to stand directly in the way of a huge distribution of CFLs in Long Beach California........it was not a good outcome.

On the other hand, in 90 degree heat with tons of bright sunshine. I baked chocolate chip cookies, small pizzas and hot dogs in my solar cooker and there were people surrounding our tables thorughout the event. (drawn in by the wonderful aroma no doubt) I was not able to give out samples, as the restaurants at the Aquarium have the concession to all food distribution, but people scooped up tons of information from our table and I spent hours explaining the benefits of solar cooking to the curious.

People were equally interested in the small solar unit ( 45 watt system that powered my lights, DVD player, a fan, and radio for 9 hours each day of the 2 day event.) and the conversations I had with visitors proved to me that most people don't understand how simple solar is... likewise they don't understand that the purpose of solar is not to provide the utility companies with a bountiful source of cheap energy,(more on that in another blog) but rather to give individuals freedom from expensive energy brokered by the utilitiy companies, and to be able to be self sufficent ( off grid). We collected over 100 names of people interested in solar cookers and countless people asked where they could get the small solar from. It was great!

But because of the light bulb fiasco I left the event with a great deal of disappointment. I will be having anoither eathday event on the 22nd. at Orange Coast College and I will take my lightbulbs there. I expect to be able to give away thousand of bulbs there, but certainly not 11,000...... I am also doing a green event on May 3rd in Long Beach and hopefully there will be 1000 or so people there, so there is still a chance to complete my commitment to give out CFLs in volume.

There were some other side observations that I made.....When asked why they had no information about the North Pacific Trash Vortex ( collection of trash driven by currents that is twice the size of Texas and a mile deep in some areas) people from some of the other booths that delt with fish, oceans and wetlands had no idea what I was talking about...... And a group that was focused on the poaching of animals for their skins did not include the illegal whaling or the distruction of Aquatic eco systems by fishermen. So it seems...... people focus on issues that they feel important and remain basically unaware of the whole system of man's destruction and how interconnected all the problems are.

Even the Aquarium (Thank you for your kind well-meaning efforts) were handing out bottled water to the groups who had outside tables in blistering 90 degree heat. But those same plastic bottles are floating by the thousand out at sea. It was a little baffling. Especially since one of the groups outside had a "fishing for trash" project for kids. They had a wading pool filled with some typical ocean trash including plastic bottles, fishing line, and other plastic containers and were instructing kids how harmful these things are to the fish in the sea. ????????

Well that's what has happened in my little corner of the world. What do you think? Was my event a success or failure?????
I just don't know!