If your song makes the cut, it will land you and your tune on the main stage at Earth Day Festival 2012, April 21^st at Centennial Park, be featured on Fox 17 and receive a package from NSAI valued at $500, including NSAI membership, a 1 hour one-on-one mentoring, swag bag and more.

Guidelines:

• Original songs must be about Living Green & Healthy and in the spirit of Earth Day.
• They should be about 2½-3 minutes in length and family friendly.
• Submissions should be emailed to earthday@nashvilleearthday.org no later than April 13, 2012.
• Submissions should be about 2½-3 minutes in length and family friendly.
• Limit of two (2) songs per entry.
• Two age groups will be awarded: 14 & Under and 15 & Up.
• Vocals and music must be emailed or CD with good clarity, along with a typed or hand printed copy of the lyrics. (No CD will be returned.).
• Participants of any age are welcome, but those under the age of 18 must include the signature of a parent or guardian.

Please read and complete the Terms of Agreement.

Participating in the Nashville Earth Day Festival is free of charge for non-profit, community, farmer, and government organizations.  There is a $200 fee for businesses wanting to show, not sell, their services or products.  Booth spaces are 10′x10′.  More details are listed on the exhibitor application.  We encourage everyone to have interactive and educational exhibits.

You can share space with a companion group, if both groups are accepted to be exhibitors.  All applications will be reviewed by our planning committee; some applications may not be accepted.  There are guidelines and a hold harmless clause in the application that must be accepted when applying.

You can submit your exhibitor application by fax, mail, or email.  Depending on your computer, you may be able to save, rename, and attach to an email the PDF file.  Other computers may only allow you to save the file as a JPG or to print out a hard copy.  If you are having trouble, please email your information, and we can complete the application form.

In 2012, the Festival will be similar to previous successful events.  You can expect a free family-friendly event complete with live music, educational exhibits, productive workshops, bike parking, youth activities, lots of recycling, and much more.

We will have a Merchant Village again this year.  The Merchant Village will allow local small business producers to sell their green products.  There is a separate application, fee, and guidelines for participating in the Merchant Village that is available on its webpage.

The Nashville Earth Day Festival has sponsorship packages available for those able to provide monetary or in-kind donations to help continue the special event each year.  The sponsorship package is available on our website.  We will also have opportunities for volunteers.  The new forms are already on our website; the look of the website will be updated soon.

NEDF2011_MAP

The Green Expo Tent, which will be powered by the sun, will feature a series of short lectures about alternative fuels and transportation by both subject matter experts and alternative vehicle owners. For the complete list of scheduled presenters visit our Festival Areas webpage.

There will be a variety of electric and alternative fuel cars to view from grandpa’s old Ford sedan that has been converted to all-electric to a hyper-fast Tesla sports car that can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in just 3.6 seconds. Come experience these vehicles, owned by Nashvillians, that are currently being used on local roads and beyond.

Don’t forget that you can carpool to the Festival, ride your bicycle to the park and use Walk/Bike Nashville’s complimentary bike parking, or use public transportation on an MTA bus.

The Oasis Center will again be collecting youth and adult bicycles.  They cannot use little kid bikes.  They will also accept bike helmets.  Soles4Souls will be collecting new and gently worn shoes.  Get Green To Get Green will be collecting cell phones, chargers, and other hand-held electronics for reuse or recycling.  The Nashville Police Department will collect unwanted and unused medications for proper disposal.

Drive up and drop off for larger items such as bicycles will be near the main West End Ave entrance of Centennial Park.  Walk up and drop off of smaller items such as cell phones, shoes, and pills will be located in the center of Festival near the Information Tent.

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About Metropolitan Nashville Police Department

The MNPD will educate the public on the hazards of disposing unwanted and/or out-of-date prescriptions into the environment.  They will collect pharmaceuticals for safe and proper disposal.  MNPD will also provide information about locations around Davidson County to safely dispose of unused prescription medications.

About Soles4Souls® & Clothes4Souls®

Soles4Souls collects, recycles and reuses shoes from warehouses of footwear companies and the closets of individuals like you. Since 2005, Soles4Souls has given away over 13 million pairs of new and gently worn shoes (currently distributing one pair every 7 seconds) to people in 125 countries, including Haiti, Kenya, Nepal and the United States. Clothes4Souls, a new division of Soles4Souls, provides hope for hurting people through the gift of new clothing from manufacturers, designers, and retailers. Those who graciously give (rather than destroy) unused inventory are assured their donations are distributed to people around the world living in desperate need. Donating parties are eligible for tax advantages.  Visit www.giveshoes.org or www.clothes4souls.org for more information.

About Get Green to Get Green Recycling

We are committed to keeping our planet green by reusing or recycling unused cell phones.  Bring your old cell phones – working or not – with you to the Nashville Earth Day Festival.  This year we are collecting cell phones to recycle.   More than 130 million cell phones are thrown away every year.  Do not throw away electronics that should be recycled.  Do your part and recycle your old cell phones.  Get Green To Get Green will accept cell phones, chargers, and other small hand-held electronics such as MP3 players, PDAs, and digital cameras.

About Oasis Center and Halcyon Bike Workshop

All bikes collected by the Oasis Center will benefit the Halcyon Bike Workshop, where young people learn to built bikes.  The Halcyon Bike Workshop aka the Workshop is a collaboration between the Oasis Center and Halcyon Bike Shop.  The Workshop is a free, co-operative bike repair shop open to Nashville’s underprivileged youth.

Through this program, youth are trained in bicycle safety and maintenance.  They learn about bicycle mechanics in action, the importance of bicycle lanes and greenways, and they will gain an appreciation for our beautiful public urban space here in Nashville.  Participants earn a free, used bicycle through the Workshop.

The Workshop grew from concern that youth of our city do not have adequate transportation multiplied by the fact that young people are often overlooked as agents of change.  Collectively, we agree that bicycling is a healthy and sustainable mode of transportation that is often forgotten or considered to be too difficult and dangerous for youth on our urban streets.  Other times, bikes are simply unaffordable.

Especially in tough economic times, youth can benefit from finding new ways to transport themselves without having to rely on family or public transportation.  Nashville has a great number of parks and greenways that are waiting to be explored and taken advantage of by youth in our city.

Youth participants will take a pledge promising to pass on the knowledge they gain in these workshops to other young people in their neighborhoods.  This will, in turn, engage them in their neighborhoods and the larger community and provide them with the training and experience they need to become activists in their own ways.

As the website www.n-habit.net states: “(n)habit is your environmental supply and design source in Nashville. We strive to be a resource for anyone wanting to be more conscious about what they do and use in their lives. In addition to environmentally sensitive products for your home or business, we offer design, consulting, and contracting services.”

Building materials include insulation, roofing, lumber, salvaged beams, and flooring. Wood stoves, attic fans, and solar panels and installation are also available for your home energy needs. All-natural wool carpets and natural fiber rugs can cover your floors, as well as FSC-certified hardwood and bamboo plywood flooring. For your countertops, recycled glass and ceramic tiles, and, my favorite, recycled paper composite. How cool is that? From low-flow showerheads and tankless hot water heaters to concrete stains, everything you need to build or renovate your home is readily available to you at 2309 12th Avenue South. I have decided my backyard desperately needs one of the RAIS outdoor grills-they are incredible!

As a new homebuyer, I am striving to make our house environmentally friendly. I fully expect this process to take quite a bit of time, perhaps years, but I know there will be countless benefits to our family and our environment. For example, as mentioned earlier, I set out to use zero-VOC paint in our home. Why? Because I don’t want our toddler inhaling anything unhealthy. We had our home tested for radon, which there was an alarmingly ample amount of, and consequently had a radon-removing system installed. These are just two small steps, but over time, they do matter. For our next steps of green renovations, I fully intend to make (n)habit part of that process.

(n)habit provides full consultation resources with your project, and will also work with your designers or contractors. As a Tennessee-licensed contractor, they now offer full construction services.

So if building and living green and sustainable is your forte, look no further than (n)habit.

Hours are Monday-Friday 9-5:30

A sampling of the products they carry are:

www.plyboo.com

www.americanpridepaint.com

www.rais.com

www.richlite.com

www.greatamericanrainbarrel.com

Written by Heather Helton

Heather Helton is a Nashville-based freelance writer. Her articles are published in Nashville Lifestyles Magazine and she is a contributing blogger for Conceive Magazine. She is also a local singer/songwriter, Heather lives in Nashville with her husband David, son Jude, and boxers Miles and Loretta.