It’s Only Natural : Hands-On Help for the Environment Is Focus of Earth Day

Caitlan Vande Walle celebrated Mother Earth Saturday by painting a rainbow on her face, planting a sunflower and sitting back to learn the three Rs of environmental awareness: reuse, reduce and recycle.

Caitlan, 6, of Costa Mesa joined her parents and hundreds of residents throughout Orange County in observing the 25th Earth Day with food, music and, of course, nature.

“We’ll have to come back and visit my flower, watch it grow,” Caitlan told her dad, Bob Vande Walle, before she ran off to ask a ceramic artist for a piece of clay to bring home.

At the Lab shopping center, where Caitlan planted her sunflower, a play featuring three children dressed in molded bottle caps, plastic six-pack rings and plastic foam drew laughter and cheers from an audience of about 30. The talking trash spoke to the audience about the importance of reusing yard clippings as fertilizer, reducing landfill waste by starting a compost box and recycling newspapers and soda cans.

“These things can’t be said often enough,” said Tobias Pina, 20, of Fountain Valley. “There have been a lot of improvements in the last 25 years, and I know a lot of people who are very environmentally conscious. But I also know just as many who don’t really care.”

The perfect-for-shorts weather attracted more people than expected at several events, including a “Walk for Parks” where $1,000 was raised for the Upper Newport Bay Regional Park.

About 35 people, many of whom were college students, woke up early and hiked through a three-mile trail in the Newport Beach nature park that snaked through coastal sage scrubs and cacti in bloom.

“Initially, we only had 10 people signed up,” Park Ranger Nancy Bruland said. “But I guess the weather and additional publicity brought out more people.”

Recycling centers also got a boost in business. Sonny Pham, weekend manager at Orange Coast College’s Recycling Center in Costa Mesa, said about 30% more customers came by to drop off reusable goods.

Al Enriquez, 45, of Santa Ana, who was among them, said, “This is not all fun, you know. We have four boxes at home where we separate things. And sometimes ants get into the stuff and we have to wash it all out before we bring it here.”

But it’s worth the trouble, Enriquez said. Americans should take responsibility for the environment, he said, because they can’t expect the government to do it.

“I think the environment starts with the people and ends with the people. We can’t leave it up to the politicians.

“We must remember what’s valuable to us and teach our children. They usually will remember things they were taught as a child.”

At Costa Mesa’s Pine Creek Village apartments, children searched for specially marked empty soda cans, plastic bottles and paper trash in a scavenger hunt. The children received dollar bills for each item they found, and about $200 was awarded in the event.

“I think this is probably the first time anybody’s done anything as silly as this is,” said Douglas Bader, who came up with the idea as part of a 31-event project for Anybody’s Earth Press, an organization devoted to teaching people about environmental responsibilities.

Saturday’s event was the sixth in a series where residents in different neighborhoods are invited to come out and “play, but play with principles,” Bader said. A pancake and fruit breakfast awaited them along with about a dozen booths where environmental activists distributed information.

Some were there to talk about how twig pencils are made, others to talk about pollution by the U.S. military.

Reuel Prather, 12, a sixth-grader at Charles W. TeWinkle Middle School in Costa Mesa, was circulating a petition to halt military helicopter exercises that shine bright lights into the sky at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park about 60 miles northeast of San Diego. By the end of the day, he said, he had collected more than 100 signatures.

“I go up there to see the mountain goats, enjoy the desert and see the stars,” he said. “And when there are bright lights like that, you can’t see the stars.”