The Green Earth Expo

This weekend we had an exciting event down here in Florida. We had our first ever Green Earth Expo by Global Green Alliance. The entire show consists of Thursday for Business to Business, Friday through Sunday are General Public, Saturday is focused on Kids. I was lucky to go on Friday. There at the 10:00 opening, I watched the crowd grow to a nice consistent pace.

From my stroll through the booths, there were vehicles, organic growers groups, home improvement and small vendors with interesting ideas. It was really, a very nice mix of a whole gamut of things the ordinary American could benefit. Every aspect of living green was covered.

Every city should have one... It felt like shopping day and in the process... I got to learn a few things.

For instance, one thing I would like to look more into is the interesting unit that takes air and turns it into water. Hmmm.... what a novel idea. However, this obviously needs to be plugged in... so there will be energy involved. There are also those horrible little filters that need to be dealt with.

As there were four or more water purification vendors there... I got to ask a question that not one of them could answer. Sure, you can break the filter open and use it's content in the garden. However, is that plastic container from which these wonderful nutrients came, recyclable? They did respond with great joy that they have something new to investigate.

Maybe the water bottle fiasco can be resolved. Currently we have resulted to 3-4 gallon jugs with our flavoring in the jug a week. And our recycling does recycle this! So... really there is extremely little waste.

I also found a fabulous little candle company, Southern Candles. Aside from being completely soy and have a vivid smell, the woman was a sweet heart. She and her husband have been making candles for years now and even their young-one puts the labels on the jars.

Aside from her personal story.... she explained soy and how it retains smell well... but doesn't emit it. So to get a vivid smell, you have to buy the purest soy available. Well... it smells great. I am hooked. I picked up a "Clean Air" sent which absorbs smells like Febreeze without the chemicals and two "Lavender" candles as a natural bug repellent for the porch.

Finally... the other purchase was an Organic Sweet BBQ sauce from the Orlando Brewery. It was cold and on a pretzel and was fabulous. $5 later, I was on my way with my over stuffed bag. The BBQ sauce made it to our ham steaks on the grill last night and it was awesome.

Next year, I will take the kid. It was a good show and next year... I am assuming it will be even stronger. Several schools were there on field trips and if even half of those kids go home and make that one change, then what a step in the right direction. I say more cities and towns should demand from their Chambers a small mini expo of local businesses. In such a flat world, stressing local shopping can only benefit. Think of all of the problems that we could fix if people just did things green and local...