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Clean-air expo to offer ways to fight pollution
Fresno program features tips to save energy, car-crushing event.
By Jeff St. John / The Fresno Bee
People looking for ways to save energy and fight air pollution will find plenty of examples at the Fresno Energy and Clean Air Business Expo.
From 1 to 6:30 p.m. today at the Fresno Convention and Entertainment Center, visitors can find about 70 exhibitors ranging from businesses demonstrating innovative energy-saving products to students reporting on their studies of air pollution around their schools.
And for those seeking some excitement, there's always the car-crushing demonstrations happening at 1:30 p.m. and again at the end of the program.
"It's amazing — they'll get three or four cars crushed down to the size of one," said Shelley McKenry, spokeswoman for Valley Clean Air Now, the nonprofit group putting on the expo with the help of the Greater Fresno Area Chamber of Commerce and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
But the car crushing — part of a state buyback program to keep polluting cars off the road — is only one of many examples of cost-effective pollution reduction efforts that will be on display, she said.
Valley Clean Air Now has revamped this year's expo, the second to be held in Fresno, to include more examples of how technology can both cut down on environmental impacts and improve a business's bottom line, she said.
"I think it's very important that we combine our economic development and our clean air agenda," said Dr. David Lighthall, research director for the Relational Culture Institute, a Fresno-based nonprofit that builds community relationships around policy issues like clean air. "We can create jobs and clean up the air."
Given the central San Joaquin Valley's vulnerability to air pollution, Lighthall said he sees the region as a "natural center for clean air technology and the adoption of new ways of living and working that don't put such a strain on the environment."
At the expo, he'll be discussing ways community and faith-based organizations can get more involved in the issue.
"We'll be focusing on households as part of that, and hopefully we can get more people involved," deciding as a family to make lifestyle changes that reduce pollution, he said.
For presenter Mark Alvis, president of Alvis Projects Inc., the expo is an opportunity to generate some business for his company's energy-efficient building methods, including insulating concrete and foam walls and photovoltaic solar panels that can cut electricity bills.
"What we're doing differently is emphasizing that you need to pay attention to the whole package" when designing energy-smart buildings, he said.
On the education side, the expo will feature a number of student presentations, including a team of Tenaya Middle School students who spent the past semester studying the air pollution around their school and learning how different types of motor fuels may be contributing to that pollution.
The Clean Air Challenge Curriculum Project has trained about 500 teachers across the state to carry on such projects in hopes that demonstrations like these will get students, parents and whole communities more involved in the subject, said Glenn Craig, project director.
Not only that, but participating students have become "much more interested in pursuing math and science as careers," he noted — perhaps going on to invent new technologies that will take the fight against air pollution even further.
For more information about the Fresno Energy and Clean Air Business Expo, visit the Web site www.valley-can.org.
The reporter can be reached at jstjohn@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6637.
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