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Health & Fitness

Fair Lawn Green Fair on Tuesday May 22

Celebrate our borough's Sustainable Jersey Certification, win a rain barrel, get a free pine tree and tips on gardening. Learn about rain gardens and how the Laroccos won the 2012 Going Green Award.

Come out for the at the on Tuesday, May 22, cosponsored by the Fair Lawn Green Team, mayor and council. Green Team leader Joan Goldstein says, “This year we want to celebrate our borough's . We want to show residents how they can benefit at home from the same energy and money-saving green actions being implemented in our municipal offices and buildings."

Rotarian Pat Larocco will showcase the home and yard features that won her family a . Pat will send you home with an environmentally safe soy-ink newspaper pot she'll teach you to fold. You can also learn to crochet a satchel with “plarn” strips cut from supermarket bags and stop by the Food and Water Watch table to learn what fracking could mean for New Jersey's clean water supply.

Place a request with the borough's Shade Tree Commission for a sapling to be planted in your front yard. Sign up to be part of the Fair Lawn Resident Sustainability Roundtable on July 25, where you will be invited to share your vision of ways to make Fair Lawn a greener and more sustainable community. Kits with 10 CFL bulbs, 2 lamps and 2 LED night-lights will be available for $10 ($70 value) from a NJ State Green Communities program administrator.

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The Green Wei is a group of NJ Learners and Rutgers Environmental Stewards, and includes teen Rain Barrel trainers Ari Wei and Adam Fahmi. They will demonstrate care and installation of mosquito-free rain barrels and rain gardens. They are gifting over 50 baby Eastern White Pine trees to attendees and will also give away a rain barrel valued at $50 as a door prize.

Rain barrels hold 50 gallons or more of collected rain that families can use to water lawns, gardens and wash cars. Together with rain gardens, they are important tools to help channel stormwater into the ground. This prevents it from causing flooding and being swept into storm drains connected to natural bodies of water. When water travels through dirt and underground aquifers before joining with above ground streams and rivers, it is cleansed by micro-organisms that neutralize roadway and lawn pollutants it gets mixed with in densely populated areas like North Jersey.

Find out what's happening in Fair Lawn-Saddle Brookwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

See a full list of exhibitors at the Green Wei Blog.

The Green Fair will take place from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Fair Lawn High School D Cafeteria, 14-00 Berdan Avenue. It is open to the public and admission is free.

For more information or to get involved with Green Team activities, contact Carol Wagner at 201-794-5327 or email greenteam@fairlawn.org.

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