GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Earth Day was celebrated in at least two Glen Ridge locations last week.
At Linden Avenue School on Friday, April 29, the Home and School Association held its first Earth Day Festival at 3 p.m.
Beth Mikros, the association president, said this new event will work well with the established Harvest Festival: One event wakes up the school’s learning garden and the other puts it to bed.
The learning garden, located on school grounds, got woken with flowers and vegetable seeds being planted. Kids could also take home peat flower pots with string bean seed already planted.
Homemade baked good were sold along the driveway leading up to the school to pay for this and mulch. A spring fling is also planned by the association. That is May 21. Money collected from this will help to refurbish the multi-purpose room at the school.
Anne Malone, the Glen Ridge High School art teacher who started a website for students to connect with professional artists in town, was also at Linden Avenue School. Malone, who works as a professional face painter, had several of her high school students applying grease paint to the faces of Linden students. Tattoos were also painted. Malone’s students used stencils to mask-out areas of skin to remain unpainted.
The afternoon was chilly and the kids — Linden Avenue is pre-K to second grade — ran around with abandon. Volleyball, with a beach ball, was played and boys hung from the cherry blossom tree without breaking it.
On Saturday morning, Toney Brook, and its environs, were cleared of debris. This took place at the Glen, along Bloomfield Avenue, and at Glenfield Park.
According to Michael Rohal, the borough administrator, Glen Ridge was taking part in the Clean Ocean Initiative. He said the town has been doing this in the fall and the spring for over 10 years and he understood that Glen Ridge was the only Essex County municipality that did this.
In fact, a cursory glance at the list of the towns and parks that do take part, Glen Ridge appears to not only be the only Essex County town but also the only town that is not bordered by, or a stone’s throw away from, the Atlantic Ocean.
Rohal handed out gloves and garbage bags to the volunteers who arrived. He was set up with equipment, doughnuts and rakes at the gazebo near Ridgewood Avenue. He also handed out check lists. Once the garbage was collected, it was to be categorized and the data was then sent to the Clean Ocean Action coalition. According to 2014 data from the COA, plastics makes up 70 percent of the garbage found in waterways. Foam plastic is second with 8 percent, glass is 6 percent and metal 5 percent.
From 2011 to 2014, the proliferation of the 12 types of debris which are categorized have decreased except for glass. The COA submits this data to the Ocean Conservancy, in Washington, D.C.
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