An Ironic Earthday Celebration

Earth Day has always been synonymous with cleaning road side debris, the “Leave No Trace Movement” and the mantra “reduce-reuse-recycle.” Despite its good intentions, the Go Green! Greenpoint! Earth Day Festival, held last Sunday afternoon in McCarren Park by the New York Department of Parks and Recreation, seemed to forget some of its roots.While I did not attend the festival, I did find its location a bit, er, ironic, as the festival was presented on a strip of gargled concrete on Nassau Ave and 15th Street, behind the Automotive High School. If you’ve ever found yourself on Nassau and N15th, you know that this area is a cluttered mess of industrial nastiness, one which includes a triangular section of “grass” surrounded by a chain-link fence and strewn with all-sorts of waste. Walking down Nassau past Father Popieluszko Square, I arrived at the festival an hour too late, but was, nonetheless, greeted with concrete, deflated balloons, napkins and other festival waste. Needless to say, I couldn’t help but think this was the least appropriate place in McCarren to hold an Earth Day festival. While the location was far from ideal, what really bothered me was the amount of cluttered debris left on Nassau Ave, as if the festival and its attendees had forgotten exactly what Earth Day was about in the first place; cleaning up the Earth.

Did you attend the Go Green! Greenpoint! Earth Day Festival? What were your impressions?