Springfield Museums’ Earth Day fest promotes green initiatives

The Springfield Museums kicked off Earth Day with an early celebration today. 22 News reporter Sarah Bianame shows us how they're helping people to go green. As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency faces budget cuts, activists are still remaining green throughout Earth Week. We've been doing this for over 30 years now, so what we do is we reach out to a lot of environmental and conservation organizations, and we invite them to participate in the event. The Springfield Museums brought back its Earth Day festival. Out of dozens of exhibitors, each demonstrated many ways to go green. Soil testing was one. What it's doing is it's giving you a texture so the soil can be mixed with distilled water. And we're going to make it like loose mud. So that there is no nutrient pollution that could run off into the waterways. And then over here, Juanita is teaching me how to make recycled paper. By blending paper mixed in water, it creates pulp, which is then poured into a bucket. Juanita uses a screen to pick up the pulp to later dry it to form another sheet of paper. Even though trees are a renewable resource, by recycling paper you don't use as many trees, and we don't have as much stuff in the landfill or in the incinerator, wherever your trash goes. And then at the end of it all, everyone gets to come outside and make birdhouses. They get in and do their own work with the hammers. We help them, of course. And yeah, it's to promote conservation ideas and our council as well, and maybe recruit some kids while we're at it. One participant says this was their way of protecting the earth. By taking out the trash and throwing it in the right place where it's supposed to be. Now after attending the festival, they're more confident in making the world a better place, which is the goal of the curators at the museum. People have to be conscientious of climate change and human activities that affect climate change. Working for you, Sarah Bien-Aime, 22 News.