The rain did not stop Ithaca community members from exploring Ithaca’s second annual Earth Day Festival, held Saturday afternoon on the Ithaca Commons.
Hosted by Cornell Cooperative Extension alongside the City of Ithaca, this year’s festival centered around the theme “Together for Tomorrow” — promoting actionable climate change solutions, showcasing local businesses taking steps to reduce carbon emissions and hosting entertaining programming for families — including performances, facepaint and other activities for kids.
Over 25 organizations were present at the event, ranging from Tompkins County government advisory boards, transit groups and local food vendors.
Many Cornell students tabled at the event — including Nicole Collins ’25, an intern for Sustainable Finger Lakes and former weather editor for The Sun. Collins discussed the organization’s climate action initiatives, like funding grants to place environmentally-friendly energy solutions into homes and their Finger Lakes Climate Fund.
“If someone, say, goes on vacation and travels in an airplane, they can give a carbon offset to our organization,” Collins said. “This is really unique because it’s local, and you can see the impacts, and put your carbon offsets into your own community.”
Collins spoke about additional initiatives that Sustainable Finger Lakes runs, including grants to provide and implement heat pumps and other environmentally-friendly energy solutions into peoples’ homes, and specifically helping low income tenants.
Many groups — including Kiely’s Cooking, one of two food vendors present at the festival — partner closely with CCE. During the festival, they prepared Bahn Mi sandwiches and bowls with locally sourced chicken, as well as vegetarian and vegan meal options.
Kiely’s Cooking operates out of CCE’s Cargill Teaching Kitchen, located in downtown Ithaca — their philosophy includes “keeping [their] business local” and their “footprint small.”
“[CCE] invited us for the past two years to come and be a part of the celebration, and they know that being as environmentally-friendly as we can is important to us,” Polly Kiely, co-owner of Kiely’s Cooking, said.
Tompkins County sent several groups to the Earth Day Festival as well, including representatives for Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit, which oversees public transit in Ithaca and the wider Tompkins County area.
Marilyn Rodriguez, a human resources generalist at TCAT, discussed the importance of public transportation options and how TCAT employees act as community resources.
“Our employees — the transit bus operators — are there to help the community out as well,” Rodriguez said. She noted ways they hope to help the community, including Americans with Disability Act complementary paratransit for people with disabilities, offering free transport for riders under 17, adding bike racks to buses and providing transportation to grocery stores and medical services for families.
Another county group present was the Tompkins County Environmental Management Council, an advisory board to the legislature.
Cait Darfler, the chair of the EMC, discussed four key programs. The first of these was working on the county’s five-year strategic plan, which includes a subsection on “Climate Change Mitigation & Resiliency.”
“We’re looking for input from community members on what our key issues are, and more specifically, what we can do to address those issues,” Darfler said. “Lots of people want to do something, but we need to talk about specific actions.”
Darfler highlighted the Tompkins County Green Scene email, a bi-weekly newsletter that consolidates information from environmental groups around the county.
The EMC recently completed the unique natural area inventory, which “identifies areas in the County that contain special natural or cultural features,” according to the county brochure. Darfler explained that while these areas do not have legal designation, they highlight important areas due to geologic habitats or plant species in the area.
Darfler also spoke on the EMC’s environmental directory. While not available online yet, the directory would provide information on groups associated with different natural resources or issues. She said she hopes to “help the public understand the [Tompkins County] landscape.”
Vendors and representatives all spoke to the importance and impact of the Earth Day Festival for the Ithaca community and beyond.
“There [are] a lot of cool organizations, and things that go on in the Ithaca community that are very environmentally focused,” Collins said. “I think it’s always good to spread the message, celebrate the Earth and celebrate this beautiful community we live in.”
Kiely added that holding the festival and raising awareness about new initiatives, technology and opportunities for involvement is essential.
“Things have changed a lot in the last fifty years, since the first Earth Day celebration,” Kiely said. “And the doomsday clock, it’s ticking.”
