The Scarlet, Gray and Green Fair, a festival celebrating sustainability and green living, will take place on Thursday, April 26, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in and around Fisher Auditorium at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC), 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster. Admission is free and open to the public.
Visitors will find more than 50 exhibitors and vendors featuring alternative energy, composting, gardening, local foods, green homes, farming, nature and more. There will be food trucks, a green car cruise-in, a free Renewable Energy Workshop and the return of the fair’s popular drive-through recycling station.
This is the eighth time the event is being held, dating back to 2008, said organizer Gwen Zimmerly of OARDC’s Secrest Arboretum. It’s always been held close to Earth Day. More than 1,500 people are expected to attend.
New ideas, products, technology
“From year to year, I enjoy seeing the growth and evolution of the sustainability movement,” Zimmerly said. “At every Green Fair, I find presenters and exhibits with new technology, new products and new programs to share.”
The full list of the fair’s exhibitors and vendors is at u.osu.edu/sggf/exhibits.
Free recycling station
The free recycling station will be accepting a variety of difficult-to-recycle residential items, including sensitive documents for shredding (two-box limit per person), fluorescent tubes, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), latex- and water-based paints, bicycles, electronic equipment (but no TVs); ink and toner cartridges; software; original CDs and DVDs; and unused or expired prescription drugs. Commercial and municipal waste won’t be accepted. The complete list of items being accepted, further details and limitations can be found at u.osu.edu/sggf/recycling.
The station “receives an overwhelming response every year, with cars lined up to the road when we open at 11 a.m.,” Zimmerly said. She said the first 200 people to bring items to the station will receive a $3 coupon to use at any of the fair’s food vendors.
Green car cruise-in
The green car cruise-in will showcase a number of privately owned alternative-fuel vehicles, including ones powered by biogas, biodiesel, ethanol, electricity and gasoline-electric hybrid systems. A Tesla electric car will be one of them, Zimmerly said. The vehicles’ owners will be there to talk about their wheels with visitors.
Renewable Energy Workshop
The Renewable Energy Workshop actually starts before the main fair, running from 10 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in Room 111 in Fisher Auditorium. Admission is free. You don’t need to register in advance. Details can be found at u.osu.edu/sggf/renewable-energy.
The workshop speakers will be from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Rural Energy for America program (funding assistance for farmers and rural small businesses); Washington, D.C.-based Solar United Neighborhoods (reducing the cost of solar energy for communities), Buehler’s Fresh Foods (corporate sustainability programs) and four Ohio solar energy installers: Harvest Energy Solutions (Delaware), Dovetail Solar and Wind (Cleveland), Paradise Energy Solutions (Sugarcreek), and Third Sun Solar (Athens).
Local food vendors
The food vendors will include Flamingo Jack’s (Wooster), Scott’s Fire and Ice Catering (Hudson), Umami Bites (Wooster), and Hartzler Family Dairy (Wooster). They’ll be open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
OARDC is part of the Wooster campus of The Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES).
The event is being sponsored by CFAES and the Wayne County Sustainable Energy Network. For more information, call 330-263-3761, email zimmerly.30@osu.edu or visit u.osu.edu/sggf.