Museum of Mobile & Partners Present: Spring Green Festival

Apr 15th, 2010

Celebrate Alabama history and the conservation of our planet with the Museum of Mobile downtown Saturday, April 24. The Museum is partnering with Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Five Rivers, Keep Mobile Beautiful and Mobile BayKeeper to host “Spring Green Festival.”

The free festival will honor George Washington Carver’s contributions to environmental science and conservation. Local businesses and individuals that participate in ecologically friendly activities are invited to join the festival to show individuals easy ways to make a big difference in their community.
Royal Street will be barricaded between Government and Church Street for a block of eco-friendly fanfare. Cathedral Square Market Vendors will be making their seasonal debut with delicious locally grown treats and home made products, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers, bread, baked goods, honey, peanuts, and casseroles.

Keep Mobile Beautiful will be shredding sensitive personal documents just in time for the end of tax season. Each person can bring two letter-sized cases of documents. The shredded paper will then be recycled.
The Estuarium at Dauphin Island Sea Lab will be providing hands-on activities demonstrating the effects of litter and marine debris on coastal watershed flow, to promote true understanding of humanity’s effect on the environment and the ecosystem.

Many local organizations will provide festival-goers with information about their services and contributions to the environment. Green Solutions will be showcasing local businesses that provide eco-friendly alternatives and providing information about what happens to goods after they leave your recycling bin. Earth Resources, a locally owned and operated curbside recycling service will be giving out information on their recycling pick-up services. George Washington Carver was an environmental scientist long before there was a word for it. A man out of his time, his “Green” ideas were lost upon a society that worshipped the machine and Industrialism. “I believe the Great Creator has put oil and ores on this earth to give us a breathing spell,” he said. “As we exhaust them, we must be prepared to fall back on our farms…. For we can learn to synthesize materials for every human need from the things that grow.”

Carver blazed a trail for the development of products from plants. He found hundreds of new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans, including milk and cheese, laundry soap and linoleum, wallboard and rubber, and much, much more.

Carver collaborated with Henry Ford for the research on developing what we now call “biofuels.” After Carver, interest in plant products went out of fashion for decades – only to be rediscovered at the end of the twentieth century. Today’s accelerating research on plant-based fuels, medicines, and other products is rooted in Carver’s work.

The Museum of Mobile, located at 111 Royal Street, will be open to the public to view the Carver exhibit. The Museum is open Monday through Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $5.00 for adults, $4.00 for seniors and $3.00 for students, and free for children under 6. For more information, call the Museum at 251.208.7569 or www.museumofmobile.com.