Earth Day festival today

Today, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., Students for Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning, the Portland State University Environmental Club and the Sustainability Leadership Center are throwing an Earth Day festival in the PSU Park Blocks.

PJ Houser, the Environmental Club coordinator and a senior majoring in environmental studies, said that the students and organizations involved wanted “to actually do sustainability, to show sustainability in action.”

PSU’s Environmental Club hosts an Earth Day party annually, but this year Students for Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning and the Sustainability Leadership Center partnered with them, Houser said.

According to Houser, “the SLECL wanted to make an interactive festival to create sustainability education.”

All three groups “wanted to reach the greater campus community with an interactive demonstration of sustainability in action,” she said.

“PSU Earth Day 2010 is the culmination of a full week  of ‘Sustainability in Action’: Student-led sustainability projects across the city,” according to Portland State’s website.

In addition to hosting the Earth Day festival in the Park Blocks, students have planted gardens at Portland public schools, organized a sustainability bike tour, and planned a series of eco-documentary film screenings for Saturday, April 24, at the Fifth Avenue Cinema.

Among their goals, Houser said the Environmental Club, the SLECL and the SLC hope that the Earth Day festival will educate students and the general public about sustainability and increase enthusiasm among the already informed.

They also want “to address real campus issues with sustainable development projects [and] contribute in aligning campus groups in discussion, collaboration and celebration,” Houser said.

The first event scheduled is a campus sustainability tour, which will meet at the cob oven between Smith Memorial Student Union and Neuberger Hall. Tours will run between 10 and 11 a.m. and again in the afternoon from 2–3 p.m.

At noon, Alan Durning will speak. He is the founder of the Sightline Institute—a research and communication center based in Seattle—and author of a number of books including This Place on Earth 2001: Guide to a Sustainable Northwest (2001), will give a speech.

From 12–4 p.m., students will demonstrate how to cook in a cob oven, an oven made of an adobe-like mixture of clay, straw and sand.

Six bands will perform throughout the day: The Soul Mechanics, Morning Teleportation, Luck One, Sudden Anthem, Off the Grid and Everyday Prophets.

Houser said, “We all bring unique and much-needed skills to the table, and are all ignorant in some area. Let’s learn and share and create a better world together!”