As Summer winds down into Fall I look forward to one last burst of August joy: The Minnesota State Fair. Usually when I visit The Great Minnesota Get Together my focus is quite single-minded: food. Sure, I walk around, I people-watch, and in my younger days I was known to take in a rollercoaster or two on the Midway. But all of these actions are attended by the gastronomical miracle/nightmare known as Fair Food. Corn dogs, fried pickles, cheese curds, turkey legs, and sweets galore.
But there were a couple things different about this year's fair. As I was walking and working down a week's worth of calories, I visited our friends WCCO-TV at their booth and noticed something unusual: people on bikes. What's this?! Exercise at the fair? I soon found it wasn't just some corn dog junkies working off some pounds. WCCO intends to use the power generated from bike pedaling to power their State Fair newscasts. The energy generated from biking is stored in batteries, which are in turn used to power the equipment needed to run a newscast. WCCO calls it "We Power." Details on how much energy was generated, how much power a newscast needs, and which newscasts received/will receive the people power, are hard to find on their We Power website. They admit that they don't even know if they'll make enough power for even one newscast. But you can't fault them for that - they're changing minds (there was a line to ride one of the bikes when I went by) and thinking way outside the box on this one. And meanwhile giving some of the good people of Minnesota a chance to work off those cheese curds.
But WCCO wasn't the only green booth at the fair. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency had their Eco Experience hall, complete with a green model home and other groups such as the Alliance for Sustainability on-hand for presentations and discussions. Outside the roasted corn booth, Eureka Recycling set up a compost site for people to throw away their corn cobs and napkins. Elsewhere, vendors tauted their carbon neutral and trans-fat free foods and services.
I'm excited to see the results of WCCO's experiments and, even though I'm still recovering from this year's visit, I'm already excited for next year. I hope the Fair, which has always had its basis in Earth and farming and natural living, continues to get greener and greener.