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SANTA CRUZ — Community members from around Santa Cruz County and Monterey Bay flocked to Downtown Santa Cruz on a sunny Saturday afternoon to celebrate Earth Day and learn about environmental stewardship and sustainability, all while having some fun in the process.
The annual event featured live music from Coffee Zombie Collective, face painting by Brenda’s Face Painting, Samba Stilt Walkers from Emotiv Dance, a Recycled Fashion Show, eco-friendly vendors of all types and lots of activities for young environmentalists — such as the mandala drawing station presented by the locally run website and e-newsletter known as Environteers — a hub for environmentally-inclined volunteering opportunities in Santa Cruz County, which was founded by retired psychologist Andy Carman.
“We were thinking about an art project for kids and we thought drawing mandalas would be fun and interesting,” said Carman. “It’s so great to have all of these environmental organizations here and other related agencies and vendors. There’s so many people here too, locals and people from out-of-town, here to learn about the environment.”
Waste Reduction Assistant Caylie Soon with Santa Cruz Public Works, who found her passion for reducing, reusing and recycling through the city’s Master Recycler Volunteer Training Program, now helps train new master recyclers at the city’s Resource Recovery Facility on Dimeo Lane.
“We’re mostly focusing on our food scrap program and our Recycle Right program,” said Soon. “There are folks here from everywhere not just the city of Santa Cruz, so the higher-level message we have for people today is about waste reduction.”
Soon and volunteers with the master recycler program were helping kids make planter boxes out of old Resource Recovery newsletters.
“We had some leftover newsletters from 2022 and we wanted to reuse them so we created this kids activity to make planter boxes,” said Soon. “We also have a bunch of seeds that were donated and we are using mulch from the Resource Recovery Center, so it’s all recovered material.”
Santa Cruz resident Trish Pinnella was one of the members of the most recent cohort of master recyclers and was happy to share her knowledge at the Earth Day Santa Cruz event Saturday.
Founder of Environteers and Sentinel “Community Hero” Andy Carman and Terry Grove had a station set up for kids to create their own mandala art at the Earth Day event in Downtown Santa Cruz. (Aric Sleeper/ Santa Cruz Sentinel)
City of Santa Cruz Sustainability and Climate Action Manager Tiffany Wise-West and Climate Action Program Intern Sarita Parikh were happy to educate community members about the many programs at the city aimed at preserving the environment. (Aric Sleeper/Santa Cruz Sentinel)
The Coffee Zombie Collective kept the Earth Day celebration upbeat in Downtown Santa Cruz Saturday afternoon. (Aric Sleeper/Santa Cruz Sentinel)
“I thought I was good about recycling but I found out that I had a lot to learn,” said Pinnella. “It’s interesting to learn that, for example, the clam shell containers that berries come in are not recycled. Most people just throw things in their recycling even when they’re not sure about it and we call that wishcycling.”
Santa Cruz resident Manfred Warmuth and staff from Santa Cruz-based Terra Nova Ecological Landscaping had a lot of edible cacti such as prickly pear on hand for community members.
“Basically, you just take a (cactus) pad and stick it in the ground and it grows and you’ll have fruit from now until October,” said Warmuth. “There are so many edible plants that you can grow locally that not many people know about like tree kale.”
Founder of Terra Nova, Ken Foster, mentioned that his first time exhibiting the local eco-friendly business for Earth Day Santa Cruz was in 1990 and he brought everything to the celebration by bike. Next to Foster, landscape designer Zach Linehan was happy to educate passersby about the benefits of ecological landscaping.
“We do our best to limit the impact on the climate and the planet by reusing and recycling, planting native and drought tolerant plants and also by growing food,” said Linehan. “This event is cool because there are so many people out here talking about the things that need to happen in this world and making it fun instead of sad and gloomy.”
City of Santa Cruz Sustainability and Climate Action Manager Tiffany Wise-West and Climate Action Program Intern Sarita Parikh were staffing a booth with educational materials about the many programs at the city of Santa Cruz aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and promoting environmental sustainability.
“We have a program through the library where we have induction cooktops that you can check out like you would a book and take home,” said Parikh. “I think it’s a great way to show people how they work. We are also working on an ordinance where new construction projects would have to be done with low-carbon concrete.”
Heather and Tommy Richardson brought their 7-year-old son Thomas to the Earth Day Celebration to check out all of the interesting entertainers such as the stilt walkers and because of all the kids activities of which Thomas enjoyed drawing and coloring the most.
“There’s so much stuff for kids,” said Tommy Richardson. “And Thomas gets free ice cream if he fills out the passport.”
“We do this every year,” added Heather Richardson. “It’s a great holiday and a fun reason to get out into the community.”
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