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Monday was officially Earth Day, but residents across the region embraced environmental activities, green advocacy and learning over the weekend.
“It’s good to see what people are doing in case you want to get involved in anything,” said Keira Harshaw, who visited Malden Park with her mother Debra on Sunday to take in the displays and demonstrations ranging from solar and electric power to embracing native plants, recycling and park-building.
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“Plants, mostly,” Harshaw said when asked what drew her to the Windsor park. “We like to browse the booths, see what’s going on in the community.”
Hundreds of people showed up throughout the day at Malden Park, where visitors engaged in games of Environmental Jeopardy, perused native plants for sale from the many on-site vendors, and discovered the various green initiatives underway in Windsor-Essex.
“It’s no longer just looking for the pretty flowers. They’re looking at what it attracts,” said Darlene Bernyk of Amherstburg’s Native Trees and Plants, explaining that people are taking a different look at plants.
“With the scent of the plant you are now looking at what it attracts — it attracts all of your pollinators, and it helps for when you want to do a home garden,” said Bernyk.
Karina Richters, supervisor of environmental sustainability and climate change for the City of Windsor, said the relatively sunny day helped draw a good crowd.
“I saw a lot of returning faces that we’ve seen in the past who are here to get more information, and a lot of new faces,” she said. “People are really engaged. They want to know what they could do.
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“My key message is every individual person, even if it seems like a small thing, is actually contributing to the bigger picture. If it’s recycling at home properly, that’s a great thing.
“If it’s walking or cycling to work or school, that’s also your little piece of making everything more sustainable.”
Rick Labonte, chair of Unifor Local 444’s environmental committee, and Shaun Fathers ran a popular game of environmental jeopardy during which onlookers answered questions for toonies.
“Our whole message is solution to the pollution. If we can do a better idea, why not?” said Labonte. The union bargained for an environmental representative at Stellantis’s Windsor Assembly Plant to help think about reducing waste and look for more environmental friendly chemicals, he said.
Niharika Bandaru, executive director of Windsor of Change, said her group tries to “help people connect to climate change issues and sustainability issues in ways that make sense in their own lives.”
Her group’s blog — windsorofchange.com — helps people understand how people are being impacted by climate change.
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Younger generations are more involved in environmental issues, Bandaru said. “But the trick is to get the whole matter into everybody’s daily lives.”
In Amherstburg on Saturday, residents participated in planting 100 trees near the dog park on Meloche Road.
Heidi Baillargeon, Amherstburg’s director of parks facilities and recreation, said a map and tree giveaway “allows Amherstburg residents to plant trees on private property and then we map those, GPS locate them, so that we can look at the town’s growth of tree canopy over the years.
“It’s a way that we can grow the tree canopy in the private sector.”
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Alice Grgicak-Mannion, acting director of the University of Windsor’s school of the environment, helped run the map-and-grow project and said monitoring the health of the trees on private lands should provide more insight into the health of the community.
Researchers will be “tracking what actual particulates are falling within the town so we can start to actually see what kinds of pollutants we’re breathing in,” she said.
“This is just a way to … ensure that we have the trees and the environment that we need for the future,” said Antonietta Giofu, director of infrastructure services for Amherstburg and a member of the town’s environmental committee.
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