Earth Day highlights global trends going local
On Earth Day in Portland, the entire planet was the collective back yard, global issues became local, and sweeping issues of global environmentalism could be viewed through the prism of two hot trends — growing and buying local food and drinking tapwater rather than buying your H2O in the bottle.
During a string of events Wednesday, groups set up booths and hosted discussions, and a point of emphasis during the commemorations was about getting back to basics.
"Maine has had a strong local organic movement for many years," said Jonah Fertig, an owner of Local Sprouts Cooperative, a sustainable local food cooperative started in June 2007. The co-op set up an Earth Day table in Congress Square.
"There's been a strong movement, but I've definitely seen, in the last five years, a strengthening of the movement," Fertig said.
The city recently allowed residents to own hens for raising their own eggs, and stores and restaurants have made a point of buying locally produced food to tap into a demand for the "grow local" movement.
Along with its table, the cooperative held an open house on Earth Day at its new Local Sprouts Community Supported Kitchen, dubbed the first community supported kitchen on the East Coast. This kitchen, started last July, provides prepared food to 50 members each week, according to the cooperative.
"It's a growing movement," Fertig said of local foods trend, "where for a long time, people were aware of it, but people are taking action now."
More and more residents have started gardens and installed chicken coops, he noted. The cooperative is promoting back-yard gardens on Munjoy Hill in particular, Fertig said.
Local food was coupled with local water.
Sara Ewing-Merrill, co-pastor with her husband Allen of New Light, a "nontraditional" United Methodist church, hosted an Earth Day Community Potluck and Movie highlighting the bottled-water controversy. In Maine, the arrival of water bottlers has sparked resistance by communities worrying about aquifers and water supplies.
The church showed the movie "Flow," a documentary about what experts label the "most important political and environmental issue of the 21st century: The World Water Crisis," according to church literature. In the film, Salina warned about the growing privatization of the world's "dwindling fresh water supply."
The church wanted to draw attention to the water-bottling issue out of concern not just for local residents but the world's poor, Ewing-Merrill said.
"We wanted to do something that is a current issue, we wanted to pick a movie that is newer and that the issue is really current. The global water crisis is not talked about a lot but it's definitely a major issue coming up in (relation to) global climate change as well as access to water," Ewing-Merrill said.
"We're focusing on the need for change in the way that water is accessed, especially by people in poverty and as well as those of us who buy bottled water," she said.
The church, which started in October 2007, practices what it preaches on the local-focus front by meeting in people's homes.
"We're thinking what it means to follow Christ," Ewing-Merrill said. "We're about caring for the Earth and being outward focused and making sure that the things that are happening in the world that we should be caring about are connected with our faith as well."
On Earth Day, the bottled-water issue hit home, she said.
"Local is always better for environmental reasons, we have water locally, it comes from our taps. We have a city that purifies it for us. When we import water from communities even not so far from ours and places around the world, it costs us in fuel and energy," she said.
Portland recently became one of three United States cities — joining New York and San Francisco — to pass resolutions in support of "Take Back The Tap," part of an international environmental campaign on water justice issues. At least a half-dozen Portland restaurants have switched to serving only tapwater as part of the trend.
