After many spent the first part of the day collecting trash from Island beaches, Vineyarders flocked to the M.V. Museum on Saturday for the third annual Earth Day Festival, a chance to get to know and get involved with local environmental efforts.
The all-ages audience, many families with young children, enjoyed arts and crafts with natural materials as well as discussions with field researchers. Some twenty nonprofits and scientific organizations set up in the museum’s backyard, showing off unusual beach trash, invasive species, and — to the enjoyment of many — a special, eco-friendly toilet.
There was a feeling of celebration. Jude and Richard Rowe, who had helped clean Owen Park Beach that morning, were grateful to see all the groups that turned up.
“What I like is that the Island is very concerned about conservation and saving natural lands and waters,” Jude told The Times.
The main attraction on Saturday was the annual Trash Awards, a rundown of the most unusual finds from the morning’s Island-wide beach cleanups. The cleanups were organized by Beach BeFrienders, a Vineyard Conservation Society group founded at the first festival.
This year’s winners, presented by the society’s Signe Benjamin, included a charcuterie knife, winner of the most reusable award; a mystery key, winning the possibility award; and a fishing pole with only a couple parts missing, for best catch. A lobster pot and refrigerator door were also among the garbage found on Vineyard beaches, as was a “mystery skull” that turned out to be a bird’s pelvis.
Even with this year’s beach haul, perhaps the most popular display came from the Lagoon Pond Association, which was proud to present a Urine Diversion toilet.
The toilet works by separating solid and liquid waste, diverting urine, the number one contributor to excessive nitrogen in Lagoon Pond. That urine can later be pasteurized and diluted, professionally or at home, to make fertilizer.
Association board president Sherry Countryman hopes the toilets will significantly lower the barrier of entry for homeowners to reduce their nitrogen output. The toilet costs around $450, while more complex innovative/alternative septic systems, a more complex solution for buildings, can cost tens of thousands of dollars to install. “It’s another tool in our toolbox,” Countryman said of the toilet.
There is one problem — urine diversion toilets are not yet permitted for use in Massachusetts, outside of pilot projects. But Countryman said that environmental groups are working hard to change that.
Many groups had come to the festival to spread the word about native planting.
The M.V. Commission, the Island’s regional planning agency, were there to talk to the public about native plants and their benefits for pollinators and biodiversity. They’re also practicing what they preach, as commission climate change coordinator Liz Durkee told The Times that the commission plans to install a native plant garden at their Old Stone Building headquarters in Oak Bluffs.
Isabella Colucci, curatorial intern at Polly Hill Arboretum, shared updates on a project to update Dukes County’s native flora records. Researchers Greg Palermo and Margaret Curtin, she said, have found over a hundred species new to county records to add to Polly Hill’s collection of over 400 specimens.
The interest in native plants also comes as location scouting is underway for food forests, meant to provide public foraging and increase the year-round food supply in all six towns. Emily Armstrong, education director at the Island Grown Initiative, told The Times that public workshops on the topic are coming next Sunday, with two more in May.
Other green groups on Saturday came with living examples of local ecology. Armstrong at the IGI booth brought a bin of busy red wiggler worms, a decomposer of choice for composting demonstrations at Island schools. IGI is at work to get schools to adopt rapid composting for cafeteria food waste, she said, and the M.V. Public Charter School is expected to be first at the start of the next school year.
Not all the creatures at Earth Day are on the same side as conservationists.
The M.V. Shellfish Group’s rogues gallery of live invasive species — European green crab, Asian shore crab, and codium algae — represented some of the greatest threats to local shellfishing and pond habitats.
Alley McConnell, the group’s restoration coordinator, told The Times that the group began noticing that Asian shore crabs had spread to Lagoon Pond last fall. “There are always at least two per cage,” she said.
This crab lacks a proper predator on the Vineyard, and like the green crab, it reproduces quickly and eats shellfish and eelgrass.
One thing all three invasive species have in common, McConnell noted, is that they are edible.
The group was also there to promote its Shell Recovery Partnership, where shells from restaurants are gathered and used as a base to grow oyster seeds. The shell-and-seed clusters are then returned to waterbodies, where the baby oysters grow to adulthood.
The M.V. Fishermen’s Preservation Trust also represented the Island’s maritime economy on Saturday. Executive Director Shelley Edmundson told The Times that the trust expects to release its cookbook of local seafood recipes in late June.
