Take Shad Festival to the next level

Donald Tripp
Lambertville
    Congratulations to all the people involved in making this past weekend’s Shad Fest one of the best ever! Each year the festival seems to reach a higher level of creativity with enjoyment for all.
   However, walking past the food vendors it was evident that way too much plastic and Styrofoam were being utilized for just a very short period of time (in some cases a minute or less) and then discarded or thrown “away.” A recent film at the Acme titled, “Bag It,” graphically portrayed the harmful effects of plastic containers. As the film pointed out, there is NO “away.” And we thought it all goes back into a clever machine that recreates it for additional use. Wrong! The plastic industry has spun a tale of deception on all of us! Most of this stuff gets dumped, just like the garbage that it is, and stays with us for a thousand or more years! Sadly, fish, birds and animals eat it or get caught in it and die. It’s a slow death.
   The roots of the Shad Fest celebration are directly linked to the environment. We celebrate the fact that the Delaware River supports fish and other aquatic life. This did not happen by accident, but rather with a will to secure a cleaner and safer waterway for all to enjoy. Without a clean river there would be no shad.
   What a great message to our visitors and guests it would be for the Shad Fest to prohibit the use of plastic and Styrofoam containers next year! This is not impossible, but quite easy seeing that several environmentally conscious food merchants in the area seem to have adapted to this method with very little inconvenience.
   Let’s continue to use the spirit of the Shad Fest to make the world a cleaner and more environmentally friendly place.