Sustainable Orillia At Mariposa
By Fred Larsen – Special to SUNonline/Orillia
After visitors to the Mariposa Folk Festival passed through the front gates at Tudhope Park last weekend, they would see the Sustainable Orillia booth where they were invited to watch a wee model car running on hydrogen fuel sourced from water, hear a radio powered by a solar panel, sort photos of various waste products onto appropriate bins, and could win a Dave Beckett print by correctly guessing Canada’s overshoot day.
Overshoot Day is the date when our collective demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.
According to the Global Footprint Network it’s a measure of, “how much nature we have and how much nature we use.”
Margie Sider of Marchmont nailed Canada’s March 13 overshoot date in the festival contest, winning the prize donated by Dave Beckett. Guesses ranged from February 2nd to October 21st, with the majority of people guessing dates in July. Congratulations to Margie.
If the rest of the world lived as Canadians do, we would need more than four planets to provide for us. By March 13, 2023, Canada had already consumed its fair share of the Earth’s bounty for the year. Collectively, humanity will pass its 2023 Earth Overshoot Day on August 2.
Joining the festival booth team this year were two new leaders, Kate Sontag (president, Grade 12) and Anna Bivol (vice president, Grade 11)of the Sustainable Orillia Youth Council. The Mariposa Folk Foundation joined Sustainable Orillia at the festival booth, reflecting the good cooperation between the two groups. MFF kept track of the number of plastic water bottles avoided at the festival (with the use of the refillable water bottle station) on a giant poster. With no single use plastic water bottles, and all festival food containers compostable, the legendary Mariposa Folk Festival is one of the greenest” festivals in Canada and use new initiatives every year to make it even more so. Next year’s festival will benefit from an external environmental audit conducted this year by Music Declares Emergency.
(Image Supplied) Main: Sustainable Orillia’s display at the 2023 Mariposa Folk Festival
