The City of Medford hosted its annual Harvest Your Energy Festival, an event that promotes sustainability around the city and features the work of green businesses and organizations, on Oct. 16. The festival is part of Medford’s Go Green initiative, a program that works to raise awareness of local environmental and energy initiatives, such asclean energy, household composting and solar power.
Leah Burkhardt, a Tufts junior who spent the summer interning in Medford's Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability, coordinated the festival.
In planning the festival, Burkhardt hoped to spread awareness about environmental issues while creating connections between Tufts students and the Medford community.
“There's often a disconnect between our host communities and Tufts campus because campus is such a little bubble," Burkhardt said. "And a lot of students just never go outside the bubble. They don't know what's happening around Medford and Somerville, and Medford and Somerville residents don't know what's happening inside of Tufts. So I kind of wanted to bridge that gap and make students more aware of what's happening in the community and make the community more aware of what's going on at Tufts, in terms of sustainability.”
Government departments, nonprofits, community organizations and Tufts clubs had tables at the festival.Tufts SIECO Reps and Tufts Climate Action were both present.
Caroline Ding, a junior who tabled at the festival for Tufts SIECO Reps and the Tufts Office of Sustainability, appreciated the ability to interact with and receive feedback from Tufts students and the Medford community.
“Tufts is trying to see what they can do better in terms of building relationships with the community and strengthening them," Ding said. "We tried to talk more to people around campus and learn what they're working on. There were also people from other organizations who came to our table to talk because they wanted to do some collaboration with Tufts.”
Besides the tables, the event also featured children’s activities, live music from Matt Heaton and Trail Mix and a raffle to win gift certificates and products.
The Mystic River Watershed Association table featured maps, fun facts about Mystic River wildlife and drawing activities.Garbage to Garden provided composting for the festival and shared information about how to sustainably dispose of food scraps.Trove Green Provisions displayed their sustainable home products for sale.
Abby Harrison, who tabled for Tufts Climate Action, said she had a rewarding experience witnessing the diversity of groups that were present at the festival. Harrison spoke with vendors from Trove Green Provisions, an individual from and a waste management company and community members about their experiences with sustainability.
Similar to Burkhardt and Ding, Harrison, a sophomore, welcomed the connections she was able to make with community members at the event, during which she promoted Tufts Climate Action’s campaign to push Tufts to divest from fossil fuels to both adults and children in the community.
“I think [our goal] was to start educating people outside of Tufts about what's going on in the community, because I think a lot of times we're so separated as Tufts students from this larger community that we take up a huge part of. So, letting them know that Tufts is still [partially] invested ... in the fossil fuel industry," Harrison said. "I talked to a lot of the parents about that and we had activities for kids to do too.”
Despite there being some Tufts organizations present at the event, many of the festival-goers were families rather than students, giving the opportunity for Tufts volunteers to not only reach out to other sustainability-minded Massachusetts organizations, but also to discuss their issues with residents of Tufts’ host communities. The SIECO Reps’ table had a RecycleMania board for children at the festival, while Tufts Climate Action provided an email template for concerned community members to reach out to Tufts about their investment in fossil fuels.
According to Burkhardt, this variety of components to the festival came as a warm welcome, given that last year’s event was planned with just tables due to COVID-19 protocols.
“Last year, they tried to have a modified green walkthrough, where they would have tables set up spaced far apart ... similar, but with no food vendors and no live music and no activities,” Burkhardt said.
