Earth Day 2013 Was A Success! Thank you.

We are proud to report 35,894 people attended Santa Barbara Earth Day this year! (And thanks to our stellar volunteers, who tracked entries from 6 locations). It's a beautiful thing when so many people can gather to share information, celebrate, and empower one another. Check out our "Live" site to re-live the magic: live.sbearthday.org

2013 Earth Day Festival stats

• Approximately 1,026 bikes were valet parked; an estimate 1,000 more were self-parked.

• 628 people took a ride in alternative-fueled vehicles, like the 2013 Toyota RAV4 EV, the first all-electric SUV on the market, the 2013 Chevrolet Volt, the top selling electric vehicle of 2012, and other electric and hybrid cars at the “Ride & Drive” at the 14th Annual Santa Barbara Green Car Show, the longest-running public focused Green Car Show in the U.S. 

• 35,894 people attended this year’s Earth Day Festival!

• Green Project Consultants, which handled all of the event waste by hand sorting each piece, estimates it will divert over 90% of the waste generated from the festival.

• 92 pairs of gently used sneakers were collected by GreenSneakers.org, which partnered with CEC to collect retired tennis shoes at the Green Sneakers booth. The donated sneakers will be reused and provided to people in need around the world.

• This year’s festival had about 250 Volunteers!

Environmental Heroes

We are grateful to have had two Environmental Hero award recipients this year, Van Jones and Bill Nye, who accepted their awards in person and inspired the crowds with their words. 

“I’m really glad to be here,” said Van Jones, attorney, bestselling author and pioneer in the environmental movement during the acceptance of his award from the CEC. “There’s a breakdown happening in the nation’s capital, while there’s a breakthrough happening out here among the people. We’ve got to be clear about the peril that this breakdown represents, but we also have to be clear about the promise of the breakthrough.”

“It is fabulous to see so many people out here for Earth Day, because this is the future,” said Bill Nye, scientist and award winning actor and TV host. “The key to the future is to not just do less, the key is to do more with less: to go further on a gallon or a

liter of gas, to get trains to run on time with less electricity, to make aircrafts more efficient, to make farming more efficient and to have less run-off run into our rivers and streams.”

Thanks so much to these environmental champions!

Special thanks

A huge thank you to our core production and marketing partners: +One Events, LoaTree, New Noise, and Oniracom, as well as dozens of other partners and hundreds of volunteers. We invite you to applaud their incredible energy and commitment by posting your thanks on our Facebook page.

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You can post your photos and videos to one of our sites (including Facebook, Instagram #sbearthday, or Flickr) for a chance to be used in festival promotional materials for 2014.