I went to the first-annual "Great Green America Fest" which was held this past weekend at the site of the PA Renaissance Faire, just off the PA Turnpike at the Lancaster/Lebanon Exit (Route 72)
I took my kids on Saturday afternoon. I had not heard about it until Friday in the afternoon when a neighbor who works for a sponsoring firm clued me in to it - was surprised as I hear about these things. I was glad to see some big names sponsoring it such as Amerigreen Biofuels and the PA State DCNR. Right away, though, I was distressed at the relative lack of regional companies working in the green and sustainable markets. There were a bunch of schools as sponsors, but not LCCTC which is actually building green homes right now. New Holland Concrete was listed as a sponsor, but no display was evident.
The event seemed to be geared more for kids, which was OK after I got used to it. They gave my boys "passports" to take around and get stamped at stations throughout the property. We only managed to find 4 out of 12? stampers - many stations appeared to be non-existent. I must admit, I was pretty confused by the layout of the festival. The Ren Faire property is really big and the map provided was hard to read as a first-time visitor. After about 10 minutes of walking aimlessly I figured out where we were. Hmm.
One vendor I was really interested in was Environmental Homestore out of Lansdale. I'll post more on them later. The DCNR displays were neat, mostly kid-oriented. The music seemed to be going on everywhere all the time - but we didn't stop at any one stage because there was so much walking to do...all the Ren Faire food vendors were open, but we had some really good "orchard freezes" instead - they were all-fruit vendors there for the festival.
There really wasn't a whole lot of truly "green" vendors there. Amerigreen had a tent with good displays, and a solar manufacturer had a lonely display at the far end (near the dog-jumping show...).
Finally we got tired of wandering about and decided to head home.
The creators of this show are to be commended for trying something new to raise awareness of greener living here in southeast PA. I would suggest the following for next year:
- Invite more alternative-energy and sustainable living firms and visionaries - see my blog for some ideas.
- $16 per adult was too much - try for $10 and have a family rate.
- Get the LCCTC involved - they are really doing "green" as a school.
- Push promotion earlier & utilize the regional organizations as a marketing outlet (GBACPA, etc).
- Please, please don't spread the event out across the whole property. Perhaps use the bowl area around the chessboard only? If the event was well-attended it was hard to tell...
Looking forward to 2008!
I wish we had these down here. It looks like loads of fun!
It would be interesting to try to put together a group of businesses in your area to try something like this.