When the fifth Live Green Connecticut Food & Music Festival kicks off at Taylor Farm Park in Norwalk the weekend of Sept. 13-14, 5,000 attendees ”” the same number as in the previous four years ”” can expect to experience environmentalism as
practiced with gentle persuasion. Other such fairs are ripe with hemp products and greener-than-thou attitudes; Live Green Connecticut has a come-one-come-all business ethos and amps up the fun.
In organizer and Live Green Connecticut principal Daphne Dixon”™s sustainable revolution, “We don”™t feel companies or people have to be perfect. We want people to share what they know and see what they don”™t know. We are not about us versus them. It used to be more that way, but Live Green Connecticut really tries to foster a paradigm shift.
“The new paradigm is that we are all in this together and we need to respect where everyone is in this process,” she said. “We”™re involved in all levels of sustainability.”
Dixon practices what she preaches through two companies: the registered nonprofit Live Green Connecticut, and a local-national marketing, meeting and expo business called Conscious Decisions, both based in Fairfield.
Those battling to save the planet, as Dixon sees them, can include those helping a person through difficult times. That person, in turn, maintains a better life, home and neighborhood.
“I love single-stream recycling that makes it so easy for consumers to participate and for companies to create money from the waste stream,” she said. And she also said, “I”™ve always wanted to help people, to use my skills and talents to create stronger communities.”
At the Live Green Connecticut Food & Music Festival, Dixon brings those statements together. Local businesses of all stripes, a kids”™ zone and a marketplace for goods and services will be featured. Other exhibit categories will be health and wellness, home improvement, eco-friendly transportation, pest services and supplies, and landscape gardening. There is music full time both days. The $5 parking fee will benefit a local green charity, and all waste will be composted, including compostable plates and utensils. Last year, the fair”™s waste composted to more than 400 pounds of farm-usable fertilizer.
Dixon works with Scot Weicker, principal of Riverside-based SBW Events Group L.L.C., which this May ran the twin-location Greenwich Town Party. Weicker is the son of Lowell Weicker, the former governor of Connecticut who also served in the U.S. House and Senate. Together, Weicker and Dixon earned the Community Partner Award from the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce recently for Live Green Connecticut”™s efforts.
Dixon”™s passion for the environment stems from the browning of her world as a girl in Sacramento, Calif. The state, which is enduring its worst drought on record now, in the 1970s endured another severe dry spell. “As a child, it really affected me to see everything dry up,” she said. “I had only known lawns to be green and now they were brown.” She also was influenced by the Woodsy Owl and now-revered ad campaign featuring a weeping Native American portrayed by Iron Eyes Cody. “They were campaigns directed at children and they worked,” she said.
After a move to Connecticut in 2000 for personal reasons, Dixon embraced the ledges and hardwoods she had not known in California. “I was struck by the beauty and lushness,” she said. “And I was enthralled by the seasons ”” very different than California. I was also acutely aware environmental awareness was different in the East. Not better or worse, but Los Angeles is a desert; water was a big issue there that was not foremost on people”™s minds here. I needed to learn more about myself and my own backyard.”
Enthusiasm translated into a University of Connecticut master gardener certificate, earned at Stamford”™s Bartlett Arboretum and Gardens.
Her current two-business vision includes the Green Drinks program of Conscious Decisions. More than a happy hour, the events seek to bridge gaps between municipal leaders, businesspeople and private citizens.
The next Green Drinks, in Fairfield, is Aug. 5 at the FAME business accelerator of Fairfield University at 1499 Post Road, 7 to 8:30 p.m., and will feature a display of the all-electric 2015 Mercedes-Benz B-Class Electric Drive car. (Dixon is a FAME award winner and one of its initial participants.) There is another Green Drinks on Aug. 14, 5:30 to 7 p.m., at Norwalk”™s new Even Hotel on Main Avenue. This fall, Dixon will host one in Sacramento.
It is textbook Dixon that she would plant an environmental nugget at the heart of a social event.
“Sometimes, a product looks sustainable and maybe it is marketed as sustainable,” she said. “But there may be more to it. Other times a product might not look environmentally friendly, but its roots are solidly planted in sustainability.”
Dixon said more businesses are embracing environmentalism and its handmaid sustainability. She cited Westchester County, N.Y.-based Frito-Lay (a division of PepsiCo), New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. and Norwalk-based Xerox as examples of companies for which “this is not a trend.” As she sees it, “Their actions bring about changes to their bottom lines. That”™s what is going to save the planet, when bottom-line decisions start making environmental sense. What drives sustainability is when you can make a business case for it.”
Daphne has basically lead the charge in CT toward greater environmental, sustainable and green living awareness.