Jean Ponzi, Gateway Center for Resource Efficiency

Jean Ponzi promotes environmental education for kids, business people, and the general public as program manager for the Gateway Center for Resource Efficiency, a division of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Question: What's longer than a classroom, loud, kinetic, and involves humongous resources?

Answer: the Energy Chain, a tried-and-true element of the Gateway Center's bag of tricks for teaching kids about the environment and sustainability. People get physically and emotionally involved in this educational exercise, acting out the energy embodied in creating, using, and disposing of one single-use plastic bottle. Natural, capital, and human resources are consumed in mass quantities as I tell a story that starts with the death of a Paleozoic-era tree, includes the gush of Saudi oil wells and the engine hum of a multitude of petroleum-guzzling vehicles, and never fails to raise a gasp from my audience when the end user blithely tosses her energy-packed empty away.

I used the Energy Chain exercise today in a huge suburban middle school, splitting the sixth grade with my colleague Chris Kalter, who kindly took the early sessions. We have two more of these massive teaching days scheduled for next week, typical of school requests around Earth Day. Between school gigs, festivals, and tours of our building, the EarthWays Home, the Gateway Center team will interact directly with a couple of thousand kids just around Earth Day.

Through Leadership in Environmental Action Projects, our longest-running program, we are able to teach lessons year-round on recycling and resource conservation with no charge to any school in the St. Louis area. LEAP is supported by grants from the St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste Management District. We're literally investing landfill tipping fees into waste-reduction habits.

Environmental education yields exceptional payback on such investments. Young people blossom as they experience their own power to make a difference. The kids who first participated in Energy Chain and our other activities are about 25 years old now. When I talk with college students and young professionals, my energy for this work is renewed. Cyclical, whole-system thinking is integral to the worldview of many young people. I'm optimistic about the leadership abilities and styles of upcoming generations, although I know there's much more work to do.

I enjoy teaching, although I don't often get into schools these days. My contributions to the Gateway Center have evolved into formulating projects and writing the grants needed to support them. Being by nature a relentless self-promoter, it's good karma for me to channel that bent into promoting my team's efforts using my writing and media skills. They do send me out when it's time to work a crowd, though, so I'll be at Earth Day festivals all weekend.

Public environmental education is a new service for the Gateway Center. For years, our funding supported only K-12 programs; our adult audience was limited to teachers. When we became a division of the Missouri Botanical Garden and moved into the EarthWays Home, we took on the operation of a visitor facility. This is the first Earth Day when public festival outreach makes sense for us.

People learn best through hands-on activities, so we'll be bringing the Energy Bike, our best hands-on (and feet-on) tool, to this weekend's events. Each rider becomes a power plant, giving their breathless all to illuminating a row of incandescent light bulbs, followed by a row of comparable compact fluorescent bulbs. The benefits of energy efficiency are communicated as a physical reality, augmented by the demonstrator's spiel about conserving your money and everyone's resources. One phenomenon of the Energy Bike is that kids and adults will stand in line -- for a long time -- for their turn to ride it. They see what's going to happen, over and over, and it's always the same, but people want that experience personally. Will you be the one to triumph over four dim little incandescents? Everybody wins with energy efficiency!

Saturday we'll be at the Garden, where Earth Share of Missouri member organizations will provide activities and displays. From its roots as Missouri Environmental Fund, this workplace-giving cooperative has joined forces with the national nonprofit Earthshare to develop funding for environmental groups throughout our state, contributing also to the national members. It's a good example of green economics.

On Sunday, the biggest St. Louis Earth Day Festival will be held in Forest Park, our city's crown jewel of urban green space. This is one time when the park benefits from crowds. Tree planting, prairie and glade improvement, and a stream cleanup will add to a major restoration already underway in the park.

New (young!) coordinators have brought connections in the St. Louis art community and fresh energy to this festival. I coordinated Earth Day 1990 and a lot of the same people who worked with me remained as the volunteer core for years. I'm so pleased there's new leadership, enabling us older farts to play less demanding roles and enjoy the festival's growth and continuity. A friend and contemporary recently informed me, "Fifty is the new thirty!" So I guess I can plan on a couple more decades of my current activity level.

When I manage to escape from my office, I like to get involved in extravaganzas. Earth Day provides an opportunity for this in the form of the All Species Parade. At noon on Sunday, the Saint Louis Zoo will unleash a procession in homage to biodiversity, with human creative license. I have more work to do on my parade regalia, but the main part is ready. It was rescued from a high school dumpster. The useful things people throw away!

Environmental work in this era is hard, so I feel it's all the more deserving of celebration. May the spirit of Earth Day renew your courage, and leave you laughing.