Sunday, May 6, 2012

Re-Tree Western New York celebrates Earth Day


 Re-Tree Western New York held its Sixth Annual Buffalo Enviro-Fair at Niagara Square on Friday April 20, in celebration of Earth Day.
 According to Paul Maurer, chairman of the event, the fair consisted of a series of not-for-profit booths that supplied information about a variety of environmental concerns including soil conservation, the Great Lakes, free tree samplings and alternative energy options.
  "It's something that is good to have for Buffalo so that people know exactly the ways that they can be more energy conscious and sustain our earth, so it's good when we can do that every year,” Maurer said.
   Maurer said the 80-degree day encouraged a high turnout.
   “We were giving out a lot of tree seed, more than I've ever given out, so I couldn't even take a breather, it was busy," Maurer said.
   "This was our sixth annual, so we hope to keep doing it every year as long as I can still get some great generous companies like the ones that did it this year to come back again every year," Maurer said.
    The event was inspired in 2007 when Al Gore came to the Univeristy at Buffalo to give a speech about global warming.
    According to its website, Re-Tree has a goal of planting 30,000 trees by May. By the time of Enviro-Fair , Re-Tree had surpassed the 23,000 mark. By Anna Dinger and Kevin Freiheit