Sustainability Fair meeting local demand

An indoor-outdoor fair in Black Diamond this Saturday will get conversations flowing around living a more sustainable life.

The Sustainable Black Diamond Advisory Committee is hosting its annual Sustainability Fair at Rona on May 4, featuring presentations, vendors, solar tours and a repair café that focus on ways residents can be more sustainable in the way they live.

The fair runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Organizer Dusty Williams, chair of the advisory committee and owner of Sustainable Life, said the fair is an opportunity to put residents from the area in touch with suggestions for them to live both self-sufficient and in a way that’s better for the environment.

This ranges from solar panels to drought resistant yards.

“It brings all the resources under one roof so people can see it and they have that exposure to what’s going on in the community,” Williams said. “The more that you can do within the community, the more sustainable that community becomes.”

Williams said he wants to see Black Diamond and surrounding communities become self-sufficient.

“What you want to do is have a community that can go on their own
without having to rely on external resources,” he said. “It makes communities much more resilient and more readily adaptable to external circumstances.”

The fair will feature presentations on permaculture, net-zero housing and tiny homes.

The topics were the result of requests from those who attended previous sustainability fairs in Black Diamond, said Williams.

“People wanted a little more explanation on creating net zero housing in a neighbourhood or doing things around your own home,” he said. “We wanted to make sure permaculture was there, too.”

Tiny homes was also a hot topic at past fairs, although Williams said they haven’t yet been able to bring a home to the fair.

Instead, the advisory committee is offering a presentation on the topic to give attendees more details on the benefits of this type of living.

Among the fair’s more popular events have been tours of the Oilfields Regional Arena’s conservation initiatives from water to electricity. This year’s tour will focus on solar power, with tours at the arena, businesses and homes starting at 3 p.m..

“A lot of people don’t realize how many installations we have in town,” he said. “There will be people with those systems that will be on the tour to answer questions.”

Vendors will be at Rona with information ranging from recycling to xeriscaping, said Williams.

Following the success of last winter’s repair café, the Sustainable Black Diamond Advisory Committee will bring some of its experts to the fair to provide services like sewing, blacksmithing and electronics repairs. A station will also be set up for youngsters to build bluebird homes.

Students in the Oilfields High School Maker Spaces program will showcase their own initiatives, from costumes made from recycled fabrics to art created using recycled Tim Hortons cups – with many creating and designing at the event.

Grade 7 student Nicholas Peters will have two projects on display, both featuring some of the hundreds of Tim Hortons coffee cups disposed of at the school each month.

One will be a mock steam powered generator that generates electricity and hot water that he and other students created for last fall’s Skills Alberta project.

The other is a graveyard he created, littered with pieces of the cups, in an art project that represent the potential end of humans as the result of their impact on the environment.

“Some people did robot sculptures, others did mini houses to show houses don’t always have to be built out of brand new material and I did a graveyard with a tombstone that says ‘RIP humans’ with pieces of coffee cups all over the place,” he said. “Eventually we’re going to end up like the garbage in the landfill.

Peters said that due to global warming, one day the environment will be too hot for humans to survive in.

Although only in Grade 7, Peters said he’s very conscientious towards the environment and the impact people are having on it.

“The more waste there is the less country there is to live in,” he said. “My family loves the beautiful mountains and going on hikes and camping. I want future generations to experience that, too, but in order to do that we have to get rid of the waste, otherwise the waste is going to disable them for being able to experience nature.”

Peters said it’s not unusual for him to pick up garbage along the road on weekends and recycle the bottles he finds to help reduce the amount of litter in his community.

For more details about the Sustainability Fair click on the sustainability tab at town.blackdiamond.ab.ca