Bringing Earth Day home

John Yates gets rid of an old computer during an electronics collection.
(Photo contributed by CET)

When it comes to conserving resources and saving the environment, no action is too small and no effort too unimportant.

With beautiful landscape as one of the many draws to the area, a number of local businesses and organizations are undergoing efforts to make sure that beauty is still intact for generations to come.

Many of these efforts and activities center around Earth Day, which will be celebrated n ationally and by a host or organizations locally on April 22.

The Berkshire Co-op, on Bridge Street in Great Barrington is holding an in-store Earth Day celebration with free samples, special demonstrations and raffles.

At 12 p.m., Laura Dubester, the director of the Center for Ecological Technology will speak at the market about reducing our carbon footprint.

This is hardly the only event that CET is partaking in for Earth Day. Now through Sunday, April 27, CET is holding its 13th annual textile drive. The organization will be collecting used clothing, shoes, bed linens and more to reuse or recycle.

"If it is in good condition, it will be reused. We are working with Goodwill for it to be sold in their stores," said Amanda Dubrowski, an Americorps VISTA volunteer at CET who is helping out with the drive.

Dubrowski said the goal of the event is to "reduce some of the waste stream that can be used again," and to try to reuse as much as the material collected as possible by reselling it. Items that are not salvageable, she said, are recycled to to make new products or turned into rags.

Jaime Cahillane, the director of recycling services and manager of waste reduction services for CET said that last year’s drive yielded approximately 16,000 pounds of textile.

"One of the reasons we do this is because more than 50 percent of the waste stream is made up of textiles and clothing," he said. "It is an opportunity for people to come to CET and learn about us and our recycling and waste reduction services."

He said the drive first started because there weren’t many options for locals to recycle their used clothing, bedding and blankets.

This year, he said, the center is again working with Goodwill Industries, after last year working with a national textile broker, which took the materials collected to sell all over the world. Working with Goodwill, which has retail stores in Pittsfield and Adams, keeps much of the reused materials right here in Berkshire County.

"We are happy to work with Goodwill. It keeps the resources local," he said.

The center will collect the textiles at its office at 112 Elm Street on Saturday, April 26 and Sunday, April 27.

There will also be collection boxes through April 27 at the Berkshire South Regional Community Center and the First Congregational Church in Lee.

A new organization based in Great Barrington is also holding Earth Day festivities. BRIDGE, an organization aimed at fostering an integrated multicultural community, will host a multicultural Earth Day event at the Community Health Program’s Nutrition Center on 94 West Avenue from 3 to 7 p.m. on April 22.

The event, according to executive director and co-founder Gwendolyn Hampton VanSant, is a combination of the monthly multicultural dinners which BRIDGE puts on.

There will be live music and dancing as well as a Native American water ceremony by Healing Winds. Several trees will be planted and there will be both a scavenger hunt and a gardening project for children.

April 22, however, is hardly the only time local organizations and businesses turn their focus to the Earth.

Many organizations, in fact, are trying to be environmentally friendly all year long.

Barrington Coffee Roasters in Lee is a near zero waste company. Co-owner Barth Anderson, estimates the company has been able to reduce their waste by 75 percent in the past year.

"We’ve always tried to encourage reuse of the products we handle here," Anderson said. "We are really trying to connect with people who might have a reuse for these things instead of chucking everything out."

For example he gives away the burlap sacks the coffee beans come in to local farmers.

The company, which moved into its current location two and a half years ago, has outfitted its new home with energy efficient light bulbs and has started a compost pile for their waste instead of throwing it in the dumpster

Several area grocery stores encourage shoppers to shy away from the use of plastic bags and in some cases ban them all together.

Local school children are also getting in on the act. In February, students at Berkshire School in Sheffield won the Green Cup, an energy conservation competition among over 30 private schools primarily in the Northeast.

The effort was led by the school’s conservation class, who pushed for school wide recycling programs, energy efficient light bulbs and temperature controlled and green designed buildings.

Other groups at Monument Mountain Regional High School, such as the Green Team and Project Sprout, a group of students creating a vegetable garden for the school’s cafeteria have lead efforts to educate their fellow classmates in environmental practices.

Great Barrington-based GreenAgers, an environmental organization run by teenagers for teenagers, has also paved the way to educating and informing local schools and youth organizations about ways to help save the environment, by hosting a series of talks and events to bring environmentally conscience people together.