Hout Bay's Green Faire

Twice a year Hout Bay hosts a Green Faire — a show­case of sus­tain­able liv­ing options in an out­door set­ting. It's an occa­sion worth diar­ising as we've vis­ited the first and the third, the lat­ter hav­ing taken place last week­end, and been more than a little impressed.

The Green Faire is run by Envirochild Projects, a not for profit organ­isa­tion facil­it­at­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity, self suf­fi­ciency, waste reduc­tion, energy effi­ciency and any other green pro­jects that encour­age con­scious liv­ing. Envirochild also has quite a vis­ion for Hout Bay and is ded­ic­ated to unit­ing the com­munity to form a Transition Town. Transition Towns is a move­ment to raise aware­ness of sus­tain­able liv­ing and to build local resi­li­ence in the com­munity, to equip them­selves for the chal­lenges of cli­mate change and peak oil. The idea is to find meth­ods for redu­cing energy usage and increas­ing self reli­ance, and a slo­gan of the move­ment is 'Food feet, not food miles!'. In other words, there is a move to do everything loc­ally, and to become self-sufficient.

The Green Faire is part of this attempt to empower the com­munity, to pro­mote envir­on­ment­ally friendly, effi­cient products, and high­light the import­ance of grow­ing our own food. The idea is that a local com­munity should 'grow local, buy local, eat local, build local, employ local, con­serve local, use local energy and pro­mote local learn­ing, that people will be able to share loc­ally, and use a local cur­rency. Quite a tall order, but it's already work­ing in some towns in the UK.

This forms the back­ground to the Green Faire, which has an impress­ive list of exhib­it­ors and has grown quite sub­stan­tially from the ini­tial faire set in the grounds of the Hout Bay com­munity centre, to this the third faire now in the fields of Kronendal School. Right from 10am, when the gates opened, things got off to a great start. In the 'Talk Tent' you could have caught up on The Story of Stuff (if you haven't already seen this incred­ible 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the under­side of our pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion pat­tern, then do so. You can down­load it off YouTube).

The Talk Tent con­tin­ued with inter­est­ing talks on Hout Bay's Zero Waste vis­ion, the Community Talent Exchange and why it is so import­ant to have an altern­at­ive exchange sys­tem right now, the dangers of genet­ic­ally mod­i­fied Food by Charmaine Treherne from SafeAge, a talk on per­ma­cul­ture, and much more.

And if listen­ing to inter­est­ing talks was not the way in which you wanted to spend your Saturday morn­ing, then there was plenty else to do and see at the faire. My other half got to 'test drive' an elec­tric bicycle on dis­play by Ecycle SA. It works very much like an ordin­ary bicycle, except for the addi­tional elec­tric 'umph' to get you up the hills and to places a little faster than you usu­ally might, on the seat of a bicycle. Good news is that if you don't want to peddle, you can use the throttle on the handle­bar and get by in cruise mode (don't know, feels kind of weird not to cycle on the back of a bicycle, but I could see how this might come in handy).

This par­tic­u­lar model of elec­tric bike also folds up, mak­ing it great for com­mut­ing. You can also get up to 25km/h, arriv­ing at your des­tin­a­tion with a lot less of the huff and puff than a nor­mal bike ride. According to their web­site, you can also get a 'trike' ver­sion, which comes with a bas­ket both infront and behind – a mod­er­ate shop­ping exped­i­tion is def­in­itely on the cards when on this model. Even their moun­tain bike ver­sion looks pretty cool! (won­der if they'd do a child carrier?)

I man­aged to stock up on a whole load of good­ies made from recycled mater­i­als for Christmas. In par­tic­u­lar the Klikety Klik box is an awe­some recept­acle for chocol­ates, soaps, or any­thing else smallish. They are made by an organ­isa­tion called All Women Recycling who can pro­duce these amaz­ing con­trap­tions for events and even brand them for you. I'm mad about them!

Free Life on Earth, who pro­mote renew­able energy and eco-conscious liv­ing through edu­ca­tional and inspir­a­tional inti­at­ives, served us a cup of solar-heated tea! The fact that it took a couple of hours to make was not the point so much as it was made on a small, home-made DIY solar stove. Makes one appre­ci­ate the elec­tric kettle, and just how dif­fer­ent our lives could be if we had to juggle our appli­ances to use with solar power – no more using your com­puter, wash­ing machine, kettle, TV and hairdryer con­cur­rently! We have friends on solar power in Glencairn (they are offi­cially 'off grid') and they've man­aged by keep­ing their needs to a min­imum and they 'time share' the solar power.

The enter­tain­ment for chil­dren was awe­some, as were the children's exhib­its called 'Rubbles and the Recycle Market'. All the grade threes of Hout Bay were chal­lenged to cre­ate crafts out of re-usable waster products and sold them at the faire as part of an ongo­ing edu­ca­tion pro­ramme to inspire pupils to think about waste man­age­ment. Well they inspired everyone!

We bought a few Christmas angels made from recycled tin cans from Atleho Dichaba, who employs roughly twenty people to do the same. He shakes his head when he thinks that the aver­age per­son looks at a tin can as some­thing to throw away. When he looks at a tin can it is worth R15 to him!

Other stalls at the Green Faire included – Urban Harvest edible gar­dens, Water Rhapsody who do grey water sys­tems and rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing, Windpower — there to pro­mote small wind tur­bines, Thando Papers – hand­made paper by Joseph Diliza, GreenPEAS – another Envirochild pro­ject pro­mot­ing envir­on­mental action for sus­tain­ab­il­ity, solar com­pan­ies, Neo Trading who dis­trib­ute local, sus­tain­able and nat­ural products, Eco Green who teach chil­dren about caring for the envir­on­ment, and many more!

Keep an eye on the web­site for the next Green Faire, and see you there!
http://www.houtbaygreenfaire.org

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Hout Bay Attractions
Things to Do in Hout Bay
Hout Bay Accommodation
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