Earth Day Celebration

What an interesting day. This week I covered the commercialization of Earth Day at LA Live. I got there early and just in time to interview the A-E-G Director of the event who supervised the event and therefore was extremely busy. I also found a really fun character, Robert O’Quinn, who gave a great interview. O’Quinn, in addition to working the event for the LA Carwash, helped get the kids excited about Earth Day. After interviewing about 15 people, kids included, I chose the SOTS that worked best with the piece.

As I got to LA Live I immediately noticed branding all over the place. ESPN, Vons, and Coca Cola were part of the dozens of sponsors at the event. They each had tents set up with employees promoting environmental facts and their company. Everyone had giveaways and even though it seemed that commercialization overshadowed Earth Day I feel that without all the free giveaways a lot of people would not have showed up in the first place. Either way the event encouraged informing people about recycling and they even had a garbage truck there to show how the garbage gets stored.