EARTH WEEK

The City of Bloomington will celebrate its first Earth Week by giving residents advice on how to make everyday living green.

Organizers hope the week will create a greater awareness for Earth Day. Events throughout the week include showings of videos on how to financially benefit from recycling and information on green careers, victory gardens and rain gardens.

Ted Mendoza, a member of Bloomington’s Commission on Sustainability, said the commission, along with the Bloomington Environmental Commission and the Historic Preservation Commission, worked together to come up with events for the week.

The events reflect on work that all three commissions do to create greater awareness for issues surrounding Earth Day, he said.

David Gulyas, a Bloomington resident, will present and discuss green careers at 6:30 p.m. today in City Hall. The talk will focus on where the jobs are and how to move any type of work in a sustainable direction, Gulyas said.

“All jobs, all human activity is shifting toward more energy efficient and sustainability,” he said.

He said the U.S. Green Building Council, which he is a part of, helped with the ideas for the week.

Mendoza said another highlight for the week will be Thursday’s discussion of peak oil because it will address everyone’s futures. The discussion will include information about how humans will sustain themselves in the future, regardless of the fact that some say everyone has gone past the peak of being able to sustain themselves.

Although this is the first year the city is having a full week of events dedicated to discussing Earth Day, the commissions want to make this an annual week.

Mendoza said many people on the commissions are already passionate about the topics being discussed during the week, but they hope to share the resources they have with everyone in the community.

“It’s really a unique thing I think, as opposed to any kind of movements,” he said. “It perpetuates all walks of lives.”