Several area organizations have come together to organize a celebration of Earth Day 2022 on Saturday, April 23. The festival will be located at the U.K. Extension Office pavilion at 99 Corporate Drive, Danville. Festival hours are 11:00am to 3:00pm.  .

Over 35 environmentally themed exhibits are already confirmed.  Exhibitors include InterCounty Energy, Bluegrass chapter of Sierra Club, Boyle County Conservation District, Community Arts Center, Bluegrass Greensource, Boyle County Farmers Market, Central Kentucky Wildlife Refuge and many more. Two plant nurseries will be on-site selling both vegetable and native perennial plants. Several exhibitors are offering activities for children.

Three related events are also occurring on April 23.  A run/walk at Woven Wire Trail starts at 8:00am.  Volunteers are invited to meet at Constitution Square at 10:00am to participate in the Main Street Clean Sweep effort sponsored by Heart of Danville and Bluegrass Greensource.  Rick Serres will lead a 16-mile bike ride that will leave the Earth Day Festival at 10:00am, follow scenic county byways to the Isaac Shelby shrine and return.

Live music will be provided by Travis Kern and by Kris & Kirsten from 11:30 to 2:30pm. The food vendors Roosters Whistle and Combination Food Truck will be on-site for snacks, lunch, and drinks.

The first Earth Day celebrations took place in 1970 on 2,000 college and university campuses and hundreds of communities across the United States. Earth Day is now observed in 192 countries, and celebrated by more than a billion people every year. Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action to change human behavior and provoke policy changes.  Earth Day is still important because it reminds people to think about environmental threats both local and global and ways to help protect the environment.

“A primary goal of the festival is to encourage both individual and corporate actions to protect our environment,” states Malissa McAlister, CREEC board member.

Major sponsors are Clarks Run Environmental Education Corporation, Bluegrass Greensource, Rumpke, Boyle County Solid Waste, Danville Public Works Dept. and U.K. Extension Office.  The Earth Day Festival is funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under §319(h) of the Clean Water Act.

The Festival is FREE and open to the public.  For further details visit http://www.clarksrun.info.