Earth Day Celebration Santa Barbara Sunday, April 17 &18, 2010

Established in 1970

Santa Barbara Earth Day is held annually, and grows in attendance each year so that it has become one of the best known such events in California. This well-attended event get to the heart of the green issue, educating youth who carry awareness of the environment into their adult lives. Santa Barbara's "Green" extends from its lush mountains to the beach where tourists sleep
 

Earth Day's conception is attributed to a Santa Barbara event. Senator Gaylord Nelson visited SB after a major oil spill off along the Santa Barbara County coast in 1969. Outraged by what he saw, he passed a bill designating April 22 as a national day to celebrate the earth. See Santa Barbara Earth Day site, SBEarthDay.org for annual day-long event in Santa Barbara. Community Environmental Council was also created out of this oil spill event, making Santa Barbara the birthplace of the environmental movement. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. Since 1990 the Community Environmental Council has hosted the event, built a sponsor list, arranged exhibits and educational displays and promoted the opportunity to the public and media.

Santa Barbara has grown its green scene with original programs, companies and organizations. One of our favorites is an art gallery called Art from Scrap. Items that normally are considered trash have been turned into unique art pieces, and community classes are held regularly to teach youth and adults or allow them to explore ways turn recyclables into "gold."

New Location: Alameda Park, Santa Barbara, CA. Due to the huge attendance at this event, the 2009 celebration has relocated from the Courthouse lawns to the park, which can accommodate larger numbers of visitors and displays.

Santa Barbara Earth Day 40’s  in 2010 theme, “Bringing it Home,” underscored the importance of bringing authentic sustainability into our own homes, as well as our larger home – our county, our bioregion, our state, our country, our planet. In line with the Community Environmental Council’s Fossil Free by ’33 campaign, “Bringing it Home” captures the power of daily choices and actions in making Santa Barbara one of the first fossil-free communities in the nation.

Santa Barbara Earth Day 40 will profile more than 200 exhibitors, including cutting-edge companies in emerging green business sector and an array of regional and national environmental organizations. Other features will include a Green Home Pavilion, a Green Shorts Film Festival, a Green Car Show, and other art, educational and ecological presentations. 

CEC is teaming up with LoaTree (LoaTree.com), an eco-lifestyle company, and New Noise Media Group (NewNoiseSB.com), an entertainment production company, to manage large components of the marketing, entertainment, and production of the festival.

“The 40th anniversary is a reminder of our collective accomplishments and the local roots of what is now an international celebration,” said Sigrid Wright, Associate Director of CEC. “Earth Day brings us together to celebrate, recharge and prepare for one of the most important decades in history.”

Wright said that in the wake of the devastating 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara’s shores, a group of local concerned citizens began talking about a different way of looking at environmental systems. Over the next few years, around the country the environmental movement was born – including the Community Environmental Council, which was incorporated in the spring of 1970. During that time, Senator Gaylord Nelson visited Santa Barbara to view the damage from the oil spill. When he returned to Washington, D.C., he introduced a bill designating April 22 as a national day to celebrate the earth. In CEC’s first act as new non-profit, it hosted one of the first Earth Day celebrations in the country.

For more information on Earth Day, email info@cecmail.org or call (805) 963-0583. Resources: greensantabarbara.com