The 6th Annual Sustainable Ballard Festival kicked off Saturday, and it couldn’t have been a more gorgeous day.
Once again, the free event is taking place at Ballard Commons Park and there’s plenty for everyone to see, do and learn about saving money and the planet.
Nearly 70 vendors with food, fun, how-to’s and how-not-to’s took part in this year’s fair.
With some 4-legged help from Brett, this little girl took a test drive on a locally-developed sulky.
The Undriver Licensing Station returned for its 2nd year, recruiting people to make a one-month pledge to use an alternate form of transportation than a car.
Since their launch at the 2007 Sustainable Ballard Festival, the organization has licensed more than 3,000 Undrivers. People who make a pledge to reduce car use receive a license and eight free METRO bus passes. (A $5 donation is suggested but not required.)
When the Undriver Licensing station temporarily lost power, they sought help from what else – an electric car.
City dog, meet city goat. The Seattle Farm Co-op returned with their urban chickens, rabbits and goats.
The Recycled/Upcycled Fashion Show featured creations from local designers, all of which were impressively made entirely out of recycled materials.
The first-ever Flash Fashion Challenge also kicked off. The competition gives contestants 24 hours to build a new fashion from old. Starter kits containing manufacture samples and partial-garments were available for people to pick up, as well as additional scraps and remnants.
This junior designer couldn’t wait to get started. We were told she plans to hand-sew her outfit. The contest concludes tomorrow with a fashion show of all the creations at 4pm.
The Sustainable Ballard Festival continues on Sunday from 12-5pm. Click here for a schedule of events.
where's all the jerky people from the forum that like to make fun of this event?
Probably all off attending a Glenn Beck rally? ;-)
Would love to attend such festival. It's great
I guess they realize that commenting on an event that's a waste ot time, is, well…………, a waste of time.
I guess TTTCOTTH was at the Glen Beck rally then…not wasting her time at all I might add.
I was at home figuring out how to turn my family's manure into a renewable resource for my neighbors.
I find this event somewhat ironic.
What has been going on in Ballard for the past 5 years is the antithesis of “sustainable” – pouring in tens of thousands of new residents (high rise condos) into a neighborhood that can not support that kind of density is a recipe for disaster. Yet it appears to me that the very people runing this show are the same ones who actually encourage the kind of density that is transforming what was not long ago a nice, livable neighborhood into an urban dystopia.
What exactly is “sustainable” about massively increasing Balard's population while doing nothing to make the area capable of handing all those people?
File this one under:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/
What time is the biodegradable, wet t-shirt contest?
Funny, I didn't see Glenn Beck's name mentioned in this story? WTF does he have to do with this freak show? What, dissent isn't patriotic any longer? Why isn't this called religion? If you drive it's a sin, right. I agree with the other comment about throttling a gazillion people into an already crowded area. And I have zero guilt about driving my SUV. Using 3rd grade Michael Moore logic though I probably shouldn't drive this week due to my neighbor needing gas to fill his huge boat and the kids cars up. Sustain that.
Remember sdrake, if you don't love the Green Religion, it can only mean one thing: you listen to Glenn Beck and are a fascist.
Funny how the far left and far right have so much in common.
FO
alright I'll bite — just looking through the pictures I'm not sure i see much of anything that is serious ecological. Is this event about symbolic gestures and “awareness” (the most abused excuse for self-righteous indulgence)?
the dog powered kid-cart in particular seems like a lot of energy and resourced wasted.
there probably was a lot of practical stuff at the sustainable fest, but I'm starting to get jaded. My most eco-preachy Ballard yuppie friends look down on me for driving a super-low-emmission 19mpg SUV (6k miles a year), then they drive their 21 MPG, 10k miles a year Subarus to the airport and fly (produces way, way more carbon than driving the same distance) 5 times as often as I do, and longer distances. Trips like eco-tours in Costa Rica and frequent visits to East Coast family. One actually flies in a private jet sometimes (which is an insanely huge carbon orgy, like each trip for each private jet passenger creates as much carbon as the average American does in an entire year). But it is for work which is a charity, so …
They buy Patagonia stuff like mad. Is that stuff really so much better for the planet than the REI brand? I'm assuming that there is some incremental benefit that disappears the moment you buy something from them that you don't truly, profoundly need to have.
I have a kid and many of these folks have kids. Many have help that drives in daily from Snohomish county or Kent.
They sort their trash a little more carefully than I do (though I make an effort), and they compost and have a couple of chickens in the yard. They buy more organic food than I do, though I buy some.
They do a lot of remodelling projects. Even if it is an eco-friendly remodel, doesn't it end up burning a lot more carbon and using more resources than painting and living with what's already in the house?
Am I missing something or are there a lot of people in Seattle with actual carbon footprints as big or bigger than mine who do a lot of eco blah blah blahing and give me dirty looks in the PCC parking lot?
Don't you get it, turning Ballard green will make it too expensive for poor and working class people. Hell, all of Seattle for that matter. The new slums are going to be in the suburbs, places like Kent and Federal Way (you can already here the gunfire from there), and the new poverty will mean sitting on I5 for 3 hrs a day to get to work while us eco-conscious types will have a fancy electric tram to take us to work in 20 minutes.
It's a devilishly simple plan that does wonders for our property values up here in the North side. Now some folks assist on affordable housing levies and whatnot, but luckily it's just enough to relieve guilt without costing us an arm and a leg!
that's my city dog!
I appreciate that fossil-fuel consumption at current levels probably isn't “sustainable” – but the rest of stuff mentioned here is probably bunk.
nothing wrong with raising you're own chickens – just don't delude yourself that you're somehow saving the planet doing it.
What's up with all the hostile comments on this thread? Just curious.