saintpaulitan
by nick and patty

With the weather being so copacetic for a change, Patty and I decided to spend the weekend doing outdoorsy, environmenty-type things. First, on Saturday, we walked over to this really cool place down the street from us called Capital Deals and bought a couple of used bicycles. We then spent the remainder of the day biking through Cherokee Regional Park along the Mississippi River.

Then, on Sunday, we drove (yes, drove, unfortunately) to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds and checked out the Living Green Expo. This is a really cool event, and I’d highly recommend it to everybody. It’s basically similar to the state fair, except the focus is on technologies, products and practices that help reduce energy consumption, encourage environmentally friendly lifestyles, mitigate your personal contribution to climate change, etc. It’s a lot of fun, and unlike the state fair, it’s totally free.

I had been looking forward to the Living Green Expo for a while, although I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Patty had gone once before and said this year’s event seemed bigger, which wouldn’t surprise me. I was a little surprised, though, to learn that the event itself is put on by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. It makes complete sense in retrospect, but for some reason I had it in my head that this kind of a thing must be organized by some kind of coalition of wealthy do-gooders with controlling shares in tech companies. Kudos to the MPCA!

It’s hard to pinpoint what my favorite part was; there’s a lot of great stuff here. I definitely enjoyed the alternative-fuel vehicles tent, and Patty and I found a lot of great information on where to buy locally grown food. We walked away with a small library of brochures, pamphlets and handbooks — many of which are actually quite useful. In the area of expo swag, I’d say first prize goes to Xcel Energy, who gave us a paper bag containing a compact fluorescent light bulb, two water conservation faucet heads (one of which we actually used to stop a drip in our kitchen sink), foam insulation to put behind light switches and power outlets and a pile of literature.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 8:02 am and is filed under Cool Events, Saint Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.