Flatbed trucks are rolling up to the OC Fair & Event Center this week carrying precious cargo.
College students from as close as Riverside and Northridge and as far as Virginia and China spent months designing and building homes that model affordable ways to live sustainably, only to disassemble those structures and load segments of them onto the trucks. Now they’ll spend the next several days reconstructing their innovative homes along a “street” at the fairgrounds, as they compete in the first-ever Orange County Sustainability Decathlon.
The green village that students are building will be open to the public for free over eight days, starting Oct. 5. Along with touring the prototype homes, visitors are invited to attend a green job fair, listen to guest speakers, watch documentaries and check out sustainable products for sale. Thousands of students of all ages from around the region will be bused in for Education Day on Oct. 6. There also will be a symphony performance of nature-themed music, crafts for kids, a sustainable beer and wine garden and food for sale, with new events still being added to the schedule.
Despite the serious need to move toward more sustainable lifestyles amid worsening climate change, Fred Smoller, a Chapman University professor who co-founded the decathlon, said he knows they won’t win the public over with a “doom and gloom” event.
“We want this family atmosphere, this fun atmosphere,” he said. “You can live a sustainable lifestyle and still have the things that you and I value, like air conditioning and TV. And that’s the message we want to get across.”
Along with inspiring the public and giving students a chance for hands-on learning, Smoller and partner Mike Moodian said they also see this event as part of a much larger goal — to turn Orange County and the rest of Southern California into the world capitol of sustainability.
Cue the eye rolls, Smoller said with a chuckle. He knows they’re happening…
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