Santa Barbara Earth Day

Santa Barbara’s Earth Day Festival opened Saturday at Alameda Park, turning the city’s annual celebration into a two-day push for electric vehicles, rebates and home-efficiency upgrades. (sbearthday.org) (cecsb.org) The 56th annual festival runs April 25 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and April 26 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and admission is free. The event is presented by the Community Environmental Council and produced with CarpEvents. (sbearthday.org) (cecsb.org) Organizers built the weekend around the Green Car Show, which the festival says is the longest-running public green car show in the United States. The lineup includes free Ride & Drive experiences and displays of electric-vehicle technology. (sbearthday.org) (cecsb.org) The City of Santa Barbara is using its booth to walk visitors through rebates and incentives, water-leak alerts through the WaterSmart portal, and products that cut plastic waste. That makes the festival part public fair, part sign-up desk for local programs. (calendar.santabarbaraca.gov) Spanish-speaking staff are on site with “Hablo Español” name badges to help attendees get information on electric vehicles, home energy-efficiency upgrades and climate-action resources. That detail appeared in the festival’s weekend announcement distributed by the Community Environmental Council. (edhat.com) The scale is large for a local environmental event. Visit Santa Barbara says the festival features more than 200 eco-conscious exhibitors, while the Community Environmental Council describes it as one of the nation’s longest-running Earth Day celebrations and one of the West Coast’s biggest. (santabarbaraca.com) (cecsb.org) The programming goes beyond vendor booths. Sunday’s schedule includes the Environmental Hero Awards at noon, recognizing Unite to Light chief executive Megan Birney Rudert and Assemblymember Gregg Hart. (sbearthday.org) The rest of the festival mixes climate education with the usual crowd-pullers: a plant-forward food court, a beer and wine garden, a Kids Corner and two days of live music on two stages. The official theme this year is “Our Power, Our Planet.” (sbearthday.org) (cecsb.org) Santa Barbara has long tied Earth Day to local environmental history, and this year’s version leans hard into what residents can do next, from test-driving an electric car to signing up for a rebate before they leave the park. (santabarbaraca.com) (calendar.santabarbaraca.gov)