Southern Exposure Tour, week 1…
This week has been fun, exciting, ambitious and inspiring. We've met some great folks, seen some beautiful forests, and have been reassured that our strategy to protect these forests is the right one. Kicking off No Free Refills our campaign to protect forests and transform fast food packaging.
Tuesday morning–Talk show with Kafy Rouse in Portsmouth, Virginia
We headed over to the CW studios to do a talk show The Here and Now with Kafi Rouse, which was really fun. Kafy does a Going Green segment every month, and this month Dogwood Alliance packaging campaign was featured. It will be online next week, so I'll be sure to post the link as soon as it's available!
Tuesday evening we had a fun event at the Ernie Morgan Environmental Action Center in Norfolk, Virginia, where we showed off the new report, announced the website, and took photos of people who care about Southern forests. To see photos, check out our facebook page. Thanks to Laura Ray, Norfolk campaign coordinator, for organizing such a fun event. I also want to give a shout out to the raffle donations, including Green Alternatives–a local environmentally friendly depot store, and Southern Living. Great gifts!
Thanks, Paul and Andria for letting us stay with you in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It was nice drive the next morning to…
On Wednesday we headed to Wilmington, NC. The drive along the coast was beautiful, with forested wetlands and trees that are already turning beautiful colors. Of course, there was a fair amount of pine plantations as well which was not as appealing but were motivation for our cause and roadshow. There is no reason these beautiful forests should be cut and turned into pine plantations for paper packaging.
As we pulled into Wilmington we met with the Cape Fear Riverkeeper, Capt. Doug Springer, at the RiverWatch office and hurried over to the dock to take a trip down Cape Fear River which runs through the Green Swamp and right past the Riegelwood Mill. We got some great footage of the forests along the river, and got a glimpse of a lot of the threats facing the river including logging.
It was nice to get some of the history of the river from Captain Doug and crew before heading to dinner with our friends and activists in Wilmington to get ready for the event on Thursday!
Thursday morning… woke up bright and early to catch up with Andy Wood with the North Carolina Audubon Society. Andy took us out to the long leaf pine savannah outside of Hampstead, NC–the habitat we are working to protect and restore from the impacts of the paper industry. Venus fly traps were out, and we saw some beautiful pitcher plants, newts, and more! We got some really good video and photos, and comments from Andy who is a naturalist and local celeb in the environmental community here in SE North Carolina.
At the same time, our aweomse Asheville team was holding a press conference as well! More to come from Lauren and Adam.
Tonight, we have a fun event planned with community members and students in downtown Norfolk. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll keep you posted.
Whew!
Eva