Attend Earth Day Festival for Fun, Entertainment, and Environmental Inspiration!

An Earth Day Festival will be hosted by The GreenToppers - Students for Campus Sustainability April 27th at Western Kentucky University. Everyone is invited to come enjoy live music, guest speakers, booths with helpful information and great free stuff, a photography contest, and much more.

The event will be 11:30am-7:30pm and is located on DUC South Lawn. Guest speakers include Poet Bonfire McDonald, Wes Berry from Western’s English Department, and Lydia Nelson, National Champion Forensics Speaker. Music will be provided by Mark Walker, the Josh Beasley Trio, Mr. Dink, Eric Wilson and the Empty Hearts/Kyte. Many local business and organizations will have booths providing helpful information on how to better care for our planet and great free giveaways.

Participants include:
• Starbuck’s Coffee
• The Humane Society
• The Nutrition Center
• BG Green
• Lost River Cave
• Wild Bird and Nature Store
• WKU Horticulture Club
• WKU Parking and Transportation
• Bowling Green Public Transit
• Keep It Clean Bowling Green
• Western Kentucky University SIFE (Students for
Free Enterprise)
• Solar Energy Booth

Western’s Center for Environmental Education is sponsoring the ENERGY STAR ‘Change a Light Bulb, Change the World’ booth where GreenToppers will be giving away compact fluorescent light bulbs. Jaiya Ellis, Program Coordinator for the Center, has helped the GreenToppers plan the event and is encouraged by the interest of so many participants, "We have made great progress since the first Earth Day in 1970, but if we want our grandchildren to have the chance to celebrate this amazing earth, we still have some work to do. It is inspiring to see an event with an abundance of support and enthusiasm from the campus and BG community."

The festival also includes an environmentally themed photography contest, Honda and Toyota Hybrid cars and a car that runs on vegetable oil, a bicycle powered smoothie machine, and all kinds of activities. Jim Coby, Western student and event coordinator hopes the event will offer opportunity for fun and education, “I not only want people to walk away from the festival saying, "Hey that was a great time!" I also want them to say, "Yeah, but I didn't know that driving around town caused so much ecological damage, maybe I'll start riding my bike from here on."

Actually, you can catch a free ride that day on a GO Bus! GO BG Transit is celebrating Earth day with a free ride day for the general public on April 27th. It’s a great way to get to the festival, and a chance to see how easy it is to get around on Bowling Green’s public transit.

The Earth Day Festival will be a great opportunity to learn, to be inspired and entertained, and to share in the festivities. Jim Coby has a simple goal for the day, “I want everyone who attends to not only have the best time possible, but also to become a more environmentally informed (and concerned) member of this big community we call earth.”