Town hosts event emphasizing sustainability

When it comes to making toys, Mike Grant likes to inspire imagination with an environmentally friendly approach.

As founder and chief operating officer of Connecticut-based Pure Play Kids, Grant designs toys that are meant to last longer than plastic alternatives by using sustainably grown wood and avoiding battery power.

“A great toy should be 90 percent kid and 10 percent toy,” he said.

Grant and more than 80 other environmentally conscious exhibitors shared creative ways to live sustainably Saturday at Chapel Hill’s Earth Action Day event at Southern Community Park.

“The idea is to celebrate our green actions and to share ideas and communicate ways to do more,” Town Sustainability Officer John Richardson said. “It’s a bit of a conference in that sense.”

The event featured vendors selling “green” products, artists who use recyclable materials and events like an Earth element scavenger hunt.

“I really liked the scavenger hunt,” 9-year-old Stella Bowers said. “We only found the air one because then we got distracted and saw the dancers and the play people.”

Artist Karen Dillard was one of the many distractions at the event.

Dillard makes birdhouses using spare wood, used musical instruments, bits of metal and old records.

“Either I’m dragging something off the side of the road, scavenging buildings that have been pushed over, or sometimes I go to Habitat for Humanity,” Dillard said. “Now that people know I do it, I’ll come home from my job and there will be lots of things on the front porch.”

In addition to bringing together the group of ecocentric enthusiasts, the town incorporated sustainable practices into the event itself.

Matthew Carusona, town assistant supervisor of festivals and community celebrations, said all food vendors at the event signed a green pledge. Solar energy powered the performance stage, and the event’s drink station used compostable cups instead of plastic water bottles.

A large cube made of plastic pipe near the center of activity served as a reminder of the event’s environmentally friendly tactics.

“It represents 250 pounds of carbon dioxide, which is how much carbon we’re diverting by using solar power to run the stage,” Carusona said.

Despite the town’s efforts, Friends of Bolin Creek Chairwoman Julie McClintock said it is hard for local officials to do enough to protect the environment.

McClintock said occasional environmental problems in the area, like a dry-cleaning chemical leak in Carrboro and oil spilling from an underground tank and running into Bolin Creek, have shown a lack of environmental protection.

“Who’s to do anything about it?” McClintock said. “One guy who works (for the) state is in the storm water area, and he has like 5,000 incidents to investigate, and the town doesn’t have any regulatory power.”

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