Green Fair to be Held Sunday

Buffalo Grove’s Green Fair will feature more than 20 exhibitors who will share information about the value of reuse, reduce and recycling and ways in which citizens can make a difference in the enviornment.

The Green Fair, which is coordinated by the Buffalo Grove Environmental Action Team and the Village of Buffalo Grove, will run from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Rylko Park, beside the farmers market.

Exhibitors will include:

• Avenues to Independence. Stop by this booth to view their eArt display. Avenues to Independence will also be collecting small electronics such as cell phones, laptops, game systems and cameras at the fair.
• Bicycle energy display. Riders will learn how much effort is needed to propel a bicycle at various speeds. The bicycle-to-electricity machine demonstration gives the visitor a personal kinesthetic learningexperience to truly understand the physical & electrical energy needed to illuminate conventional vs.energy efficient light bulbs.
• BG-EAT – Composting 101. Learn from Buffalo Grove’s Environmental Action Team (BG-EAT) how and why it is important to compost. More than 12 percent of what we throw away is food scraps. When this material is sent to a landfill it contributes to disposal costs and can create greenhouse gas emissions. When composted, it becomes a useful product that adds nutrients and improves the quality of soil for trees, gardens and more.
• Buffalo Creek Clean Watershed Partnership. A watershed is an area of land where all living things are linked by their common water course. Buffalo Creek drains an area of 27 square miles and continues through Buffalo Grove into the Des Plaines River. The Partnership will provide information regarding flooding and erosion, water quality and habitat loss along the stream that drains parts of 11 communities in northern Cook and southern Lake counties. Learn how you can get involved and make a difference.
• Buffalo Grove Garden Club. Is it a weed or is it a flower? What plants will attract butterflies to a garden? What native plants can be planted in a yard? Experienced gardeners will be on hand to answer gardening questions and provide information on native plants.
• Buffalo Grove Park District. Donate gently used shoes to be recycled for Share Your Soles, an organization which distributes shoes to adults and children in the most impoverished areas of the world. An environmental themed game and craft will also be coordinated.
• Gewalt Hamilton. Stop by this booth to see a rain garden. Learn how a rain garden improves water quality by slowing the flow of water. On the surface it looks like an attractive garden, but what makes it a rain garden is how it gets its water and what happens to that water once it arrives in the garden.
• Kids Crafts. Stop by to see how you can save things from landfills and turn them into fun, useful projects. Use pots from plants purchased at garden stores, plastic food containers, such as yogurt cups and butter tubs and decorate them with old greeting cards, magazines, scraps of leftover material, ribbons, and other items to make a creative container. Then take the container to the Raupp Museum exhibit to plant a heritage seed. Stop by this booth to find out what you can make with egg cartons.
• Lake County Forest Preserve. Learn how you can help the forest preserve with restoration projects. An eco-friendly craft will be available and visitors will be able to touch skin examples of local wildlife.
• Lions Club. Did you know that the Lions Clubs collect millions of eyeglasses each year to address the need for glasses as part of their worldwide SightFirst program? Bring your eye glasses, hearing aids and keys to be donated for the Lions Club reuse and recycling program. Spin the Environmental Challenge Wheel to win a prize.
• Live it Yoga. Practice yoga, meditation, and learn about other arts to support sustainable living. Live it Yoga will also be collecting used yoga mats to be donated to underprivileged areas.
• Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. Learn about water conservation/reuse and take a water environment pledge for a chance to win a repurposed rain barrel.
• New LIFE for old Bags. NLOB is a wonder project that helps the environment by reusing plastic bags and aids the homeless. Bring your plastic bags to get re-used from this organization. NLOB volunteers repurpose plastic bags to make plastic yarn (“plarn”), which is crocheted to make sleeping mats for the homeless. In their first two years, NLOB volunteers made 395 sleeping mats that were distributed to homeless people by Cornerstone Community Outreach in the uptown area of Chicago. They estimated this reuse diverted 277,000 plastic bags from the landfills.
• Raupp Museum. Watch a preview of the museum's new Lost Prairie exhibit currently running through the summer. Kids can plant heritage seeds and learn to make a ‘green’ kite using recycled newspaper.
• Village of Buffalo Grove Board of Health. Stop by the village’s booth to learn about the myriad of items that can be recycled. Visitors can drop off gently used books, household batteries, old hearing aids, and compact fluorescent bulbs at the Fair. Place items for recycling in sealed plastic bags.
• Working Bikes Cooperative. This organization gives new life to old bikes and independence to those who ride them in underserved communities. Bikes will not be collected on June 24; watch the Village News for a pick up date at a future farmers market.
• Zimmermann True Value. Stop by to learn about the eco-friendly products carried that can make you feel better about completing your projects, and the impact you make on the environment.Demonstrations will be provided. The first 100 visitors will receive a reusable green bag.

For a complete list of exhibitors and the services and programs they offer, visit the village’s website. Contact the Village of Buffalo Grove at (847) 459-2525 or info@vbg.org for more information.