Foster City Earth Day Fair, 2011

We can't bid adieu to April without a few paragraphs about the Foster City Earth Day Fair held two weekends ago.

The "librarian look" hasn't changed much since I was going to school.

Many in the community took to heart the admonition to "reduce, reuse, and recycle" by donating household articles in the "free-cycle" area, which was largely picked clean by day's end. Most items were in good condition, but attendees were on their good behavior and didn't appear to be overly grabby despite everything being free.

Community organizations such as our church were permitted to sell goods for fundraising purposes. (All our proceeds went to hunger and education charities.) Keeping in mind the 3 R's of Earth Day, we applied heavy discounts from the start because we didn't want to have anything left at the close. Children's books at 3 for $1 moved quickly, and everything else was between 50 cents and $2.

The church booth was crowded in the morning.

Foster City is to be commended for providing a facility to dispose of old electronics and expired prescription drugs, which can contaminate landfills.

Prescriptions were recycled and transit alternatives were explained here.

The Earth Day Fair was also an opportunity to strike up conversations with passers-by, most of whom I either knew or with whom I had only two degrees of separation. Heads buried in electronic screens, we don't have enough occasions to chat amiably with others in a non-commercial or hardly-commercial setting.

Intrigued by our sign, a middle-aged engineer from India spent half an hour asking questions about the Episcopal Church, its history and relationship with the Church of England, and the Anglican communion's place within Christendom. I think he appreciated my non-proselytizing explanations; well, it's hard to ride on a high horse when the church was founded by Henry VIII under ignoble circumstances.

By day's end we had collected nearly $400 and disposed of most of our inventory. The remainder was donated to PARCA, which has assisted the developmentally disabled on the Peninsula for over half a century.

Bowditch Middle School students helped take down the tent.

If one divides the dollars received by the total hours volunteered, our earning rate would be well below the minimum wage. Using purely financial measures the endeavor wasn't a success. But here, as with other matters environmental, dollars and cents weren't the main motivation. We took comfort from knowing that we safely disposed of articles we didn't want or placed them in the hands of someone who could use them. © 2011 Stephen Yuen