"Go Green" Expost facto

The Go Green Expo has Gone. Maybe you, too, went and checked out the panorama of eco-friendly products, services and ideas being showcased at the Pennsylvania Convention Center this past weekend.

Though not as expansive or all-encompassing as the Green Festival, our Go Green Expo was chock full of interesting things to see, hear and try. And for someone with a local bent the best part was being introduced to companies from around here doing good "green" work that I might not have known about otherwise.

We'll meet some of those in individual spotlights in coming days, but in big-picture terms, the Expo was good for what it did, balancing high-tech innovations with low-tech, timeless wisdom, notable local speakers and a huge green SEPTA bus. It almost goes without saying, but I'll repeat once again, that this new breed of exposition creditably strives to walk the talk, aiming for a zero-emissions event and discouraging the proliferation of paper and trash that usually accompany these spectacles.

On the whole the Expo succeeded in this effort, but it must be noted that the increasingly well-documented tie between livestock and greenhouse gas was soft-pedaled to the point of negligibility. There was exactly one exhibitor making this case, no panel sessions devoted to it (versus a "Sustainable Transportation" session, even though livestock production creates more greenhouse gases than all of human transport) and precious little in the way of veg food options.

Other than that lapse (standard, of course, in the "green" movement and not at all particular to this event) the gathering seemed pretty successful. During the afternoon I was there I saw a good crowd for both the speaker sessions and the exhibits (those giving away food or drink samples were the most popular, natch) overheard a lot of lively conversations and learned some things myself.

The winner ofthe public goodwill award - that is, the best bag given out to carry your goodies and promo literature in (and later, groceries - because this is a sustainable event, remember) was Sun and Earth, the local organic cleaner company, with a pretty spiffy fold-up-and-snap bag and a not inconsiderable amount of free samples being given out. With this, the company earns the top of the batting order in our upcoming spotlights; look for more about them later today.