This week flew by in an unreal flash. During its days, there were numerous activities and events to celebrate Earth Day all over the globe. Here in Toronto, I found a few ways to get my "green" on: I went to a Green Drinks event on the 22nd and met other Torontonians interested in chatting about all things environmental; a good friend of mine and I went to see the Disneynature movie Oceans; and I trekked down to Toronto's Green Living Show this past Saturday to see what wares and enviro-wonders vendors and organizations had to share with us. These activities were really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what was happening in this city, but it shows some of the diversity of events taking place to mark the importance of our environment.
That brings me to a bit of a point that I would like to make about Earth Day. I think most of us would agree that these activities and "acts of green" really shouldn't just take place around April 22. We should be finding ways to enjoy the nature around us all year long. I also think that many of us do think about these issues outside of the month of April, but we can get caught up in a lot of the fanfare around Earth Day. Is that such a bad thing? Probably not, but I suppose we should make more of an effort to keep the greening going during the other parts of the year, too.
In brief, here are my thoughts about the Green Living Show and the Oceans film:
(Ontario Nature booth [left] and ecostems [right] at the 2010 Green Living Show in Toronto)
Green Living Show
I've heard about the Green Living Show and I was quite excited to go and wander around the aisles of booths with manufacturers, producers and organizers of great "green" ideas. Green energy and cars flooded the Toronto Exhibition Center, which I pretty much walked right on by (for one, I am not in the position to purchase either yet and, two, I'd rather take transit downtown than add to the gridlock). I liked the idea of the BioVino Wine tasting section and thought there were some pretty great baby product vendors on site. There were loads of good greener cleaning manufacturers present (see my purchase of the Nellie's PVC-free Dryerballs and Nellie's essential oil lavender Fragrance Sticks below - see ya dryer sheets!).
I was a bit disappointed not to see more presentations by some of the big environmental leaders (they've had Al Gore and David Suzuki in the past) to the general public, though. It's such an opportunity to share solutions, but I guess this wasn't the year for it. I also wondered where all the other great green producers were. The show seemed a little lackluster and I was left hoping for a little more.
(Photo credit: Disneynature)
The Disneynature movie Oceans opened on April 22 and I was pretty psyched to see this one after Rob Stewart gave it his approval last week. The film was definitely a Disney production, all packaged up with a boy gazing out at the sea, wondering what it was and Pierce Brosnan's voice summing it all up in very few words throughout the movie's length. There was some amazing footage capturing dolphins as the sped and twirled through the water. Rare glimpses at fish like the Asian sheepshead wrasse in Japan (above) were also totally special. A lot of the film seemed like it had been done before (think Blue Planet by the BBC), but without the environmental education portion and David Attenborough. I'd say the movie is worth seeing, or maybe renting, for some of its great scenes and because, even if it is a bit sappy at beginning and end, it still helps us to appreciate our oceans a little more.
No comments:
Post a Comment